Young Danny Torrance from Stephen King‘s horror classic The Shining is all grown up in the author’s sequel, Doctor Sleep. And now an actor has been chosen to play adult Danny in the film adaptation of that sequel.

It’s being reported that Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting, Star Wars) has signed on to play Torrance in the project, which is being directed by Mike Flanagan for Warner Brothers.

Here’s a description of Doctor Sleep from Amazon:

On highways across America, a tribe of people called the True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless””mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, the True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the steam that children with the shining produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel, where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant shining power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to this icon in the Stephen King canon.

Doctor Sleep has been in development at Warner Bros. for a while now, along with a prequel to The Shining titled Overlook Hotel. The prequel doesn’t appear to in active development anymore. At least not at the moment.

Flanagan is no stranger to King’s work. He recently directed an adaptation of King’s Gerald’s Game for Netflix.

The report says that King himself has given his blessing to McGregor taking on the role of Dan Torrance in the sequel. The actor can next be seen in Disney’s upcoming Winnie the Pooh movie Christopher Robin.

[Source: Variety]

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