The promising The Shining seem doomed to failure. Stephen King is a prolific wordsmith, but few of his works cast as long a shadow over the history of horror quite like The Shining. Published in 1977, the novel was later adapted into a movie by director Stanley Kubrick in 1980.
The Shining diverged from King’s novel (though not as much as Kubrick’s first draft intended to) and was met with mixed reviews upon release. One of many disappointed critics was King himself, who disliked the many changes Kubrick made to his original book. However, in the decades since its release, The Shining came to be viewed not only as classic but as one of the formative movies in the genre.
Kubrick’s The Shining is now seen as, alongside Overlook television series from Bad Robot has been canceled makes the properties inability to sustain a franchise even clearer. So, why don't follow-ups to The Shining work? One answer that could be behind their failure is an apparent lack of interest in a follow-up to the classic film.
While critics and cinema fans may love The Shining, the Kubrick movie is over forty years old and as such, has less brand recognition among a younger generation. Many of the recent King adaptations such as Blade Runner 2049’s underperformance.
However, a lack of audience interest is not the only issue standing in the way of The Shining spinoffs. Both Dr. Sleep and Overlook were conceived during something of a renaissance for King, and the author’s work may have flooded the market and left viewers uninterested in more from the world of one of his most famous works. 2020’s TV version of The Outsider, the overly-familiar trappings of The Shining could make spinoffs and sequels a tiresome prospect for viewers.
