Do We Want to See a Prequel to The Shining?

It seems Glen Mazzara is in talks to write The Overlook Hotel, which will be a prequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining—which was, in turn, a film adaptation of the Stephen King novel.

Mazzara most recently served as showrunner for the last two seasons of The Walking Dead, after taking over when Frank Darabont was fired (Mazzara was also fired, in December; it seems that’s a difficult job to keep, no matter how well you do it).

My first inclination is to say this isn’t needed and will probably be terrible. However, thinking again, this could work. Even though he apparently didn’t get on too well with AMC or The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, he did a fine job taking over the reigns for Darabont (no small shoes to fill). Yes, it’s true Frank Darabont is no Stanley Kubrick, and Jack Nicholson’s performance isn’t one we can expect to be replicated. That’s all well and good, and I get it; but people said the same thing about Nicholson’s performance as The Joker, and look what happened there. What’s more, we’ve seen a recent influx of these prequels/continuations of classic horror stories; Bates Motel, a prequel series to Hitchcock’s Psycho, debuted March 18 to mostly positive reviews and high ratings; it has already been renewed for a second season. Hannibal, a continuation series to The Silence of the Lambs/Red Dragon, premiered April 4 to equally positive praise. Hell, Stephen King himself recently finished a sequel novel to The Shining; the point: this could work.

Then again, one has only to look back at the abysmal 1998 Psycho remake, directed by the great-in-his-own-right Gus Van Sant and starring a young Vince Vaughn, to see that anytime you revisit a classic, you absolutely must tread lightly.