Shining Prequel Forges Ahead.

Still without a concrete release date The Overlook Hotel is certainly an intriguing prequel project and one which seems to be gathering momentum.

We so far know that it will deal with the origins of the Hotel, built by the robber baron Robert Townley (Bob), Watson at the turn of the 20th century but other than that, little else is known. Production on the project appears to be forging ahead nicely and in a recent interview with Collider producer James Vanderbilt confirmed that director Mark Romanek, (Never Let Me Go, One Hour Photo), has his own particular vision for the prequel which won’t be as obvious as some might assume:

You want a real filmmaker like Mark doing it…Honestly I think people will really be excited about it, because it’s not like ’20 Years Before The Shining!’. I don’t want to give too much away about the story but the way Glen cracked it and the way Mark has sort of cracked it, it’s completely its own film, which I think is super smart. It’s not like, ‘When Scatman Crothers was young, he…’ it’s not that.

Personally I would love to see a There Will Be Blood vibe to this film with Bob T. Watson carving out his dream hotel project in the Colorado Rockies,  a man driven by obsession and completely oblivious of its dangerous legacy.