Stephen King’s Most-Hated Film Arrives in IMAX for the First Time

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Keep it from Stephen King, but Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is returning to theaters. An IMAX trailer that premiered on October 28 announced the Kubrick-directed classic will play in IMAX screens for a brief engagement beginning December 12 — so if you’ve ever wanted to see that monumental torrent of blood pour from an elevator on a colossal screen, this is your opportunity. Stephen King fans may bristle, but the spectacle is set to be unforgettable.

Although The Shining is routinely cited as one of cinema’s greatest horror films, King has long been vocal in his dislike of Kubrick’s interpretation. Over the decades since the film’s 1980 release he’s faulted numerous choices — from the filming location to casting decisions and alterations to the novel’s themes — and hasn’t shied away from airing those grievances in interviews and essays. King’s criticisms have become part of the film’s lore.

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King’s objections have focused on several creative choices. He’s said the film downplays the alcoholism that informed much of the novel’s tension and worried that casting Jack Nicholson — fresh from his Oscar-winning turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — undercut the slow-unraveling of Jack Torrance by telegraphing his instability. He’s also complained that Wendy Torrance’s character was diminished in the adaptation, reduced to a more fragile, less nuanced presence than the woman he imagined on the page. Others disagree — many critics and viewers still regard Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy as a standout element of Kubrick’s film.

Beyond those surface disagreements, King has argued more philosophically that Kubrick shifted the film’s source of menace: where the novel locates much of the horror in the Overlook Hotel’s malignant, almost supernatural presence, King says the movie reframes the threat as stemming primarily from the characters themselves. In King’s view, Kubrick—a skeptical filmmaker—couldn’t convey the hotel’s inexplicable, otherworldly evil and instead emphasized a domestic tragedy rooted in human failings.

King’s relationship with Kubrick’s The Shining has softened imperfectly over time. When he wrote the sequel novel Doctor Sleep (2013), King reiterated his preference for the book’s version of events in the afterword, noting that Doctor Sleep follows what he considers the “true history” of the Torrance family. Later, however, director Mike Flanagan’s film adaptation of Doctor Sleep — which consciously engaged with both King’s novel and Kubrick’s film — prompted a more conciliatory response from the author. After the 2019 release King was quoted as saying, “Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here.” King’s remark praised Flanagan’s effort to reconcile the two visions.

So while King’s criticisms remain part of the conversation around Kubrick’s film, he appears to have at least partially eased his stance — though we wouldn’t necessarily expect him to be first in line at his local IMAX this December.

Source: Polygon