Variety brings word that Zahn McClarnon (Westworld) will be joining Ewan McGregor (Christopher Robin) and Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible – Fallout) as Crow Daddy in the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep. Carl Lumbly (Supergirl) and Alex Essoe (Midnighters) have also been cast in the Warner Bros. feature as Dick Halloran and Wendy Torrance, respectively, Deadline has confirmed.
Halloran was originally played by Scatman Crothers in the 1980 horror adaptation of The Shining, with Wendy portrayed previously by Shelley Duvall. McClarnon’s Crow Daddy is said to be the right-hand man of Rose the Hat (Ferguson), the head of a cult that feeds on the “stream” created by young people who have a touch of the “shining” like Danny exhibited in the first installment of the story. It is an excruciating fatal process for the victims and Danny finds himself in their crosshairs as he tries to help a young girl elude their grasp.
Doctor Sleep is set to be directed and written by Mike Flanagan, making it his second King adaptation after the acclaimed Gerald’s Game. Warner Bros. will release the movie on January 24, 2020. His producing partner, Trevor Macy, is set to produce along with Jon Berg for Vertigo Entertainment.
Published 36 years after The Shining, Doctor Sleep follows an adult Danny Torrance (McGregor) from the original novel. 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.” There Dan meets 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.
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