Doctor Sleep behind the scenes: How crew rebuilt Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel

Doctor Sleep is the second part of The Shining saga, featuring Dan Torrance as an adult. Dan (played by Ewan McGregor) is recovering from alcoholism after his childhood traumas catch up with him. But when real danger strikes, he must return to the place which scarred him – The Overlook Hotel.

***Warning: Plot details of Doctor Sleep below***

In Doctor Sleep, Dan tries to protect the young Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) as her ‘shine’ has caught the attention of some unsavoury types.

The True Knot, a sadistic group led by Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) are hunting children who ‘shine’ so they can eat their ‘steam,’ by frightening them and causing them pain so they can have a long life.

So when they discover Abra, whose power is bigger than any of the other children they have come across, they have to get her.

She contacts Dan, who she speaks to because of their ‘shine,’ and asks for help.

After trying to evade the deadly Rose for a while, Dan realises there is only one place where they can trap her forever if they hope to be rid of her – The Overlook Hotel.

Director Mike Flanagan has opened up on how tricky it was to recreate The Overlook Hotel – as well as try to recreate some of Dan’s memories of his time based on the Stanley Kubrick movie The Shining.

Speaking at a Q&A in London, he said: “Warner Bros had all of his [Kubrick’s] blueprints and design elements and they gave them to us.

“The interesting thing was he didn’t always follow his own plan, so when we were down the road building this we were like, ‘This isn’t what it was like in the movie.’”

Flanagan explained how the crew went to “forensic film school” in trying to recreate shots, angles, and try to capture what Kubrick created.

He said: “To imagine what it’s like, to imagine why Stanley Kubrick put his lens in this specific place in the Colorado ranch, we got to do that.

“We got to put the lens there in the exact same set, the exact same dimensions, and if there was ever a question to why using this angle, this lens… we got to ask him in a way…

“And without fail, over time, I would move the slider over this way and check it out and we would find out forensically why his decision was the best one, why the symmetry was best served… why it OK to cheat an actor off their mark… why it OK to forego the continuity because the image was so much better.

“That kind of forensic film school – I can’t imagine having another chance like that – we were incredibly lucky to be able to do that.

“And there was a sense too that if someone else had made the film, as a fan, I would be scrutinising every frame.

“I would hold them to the standard which would be pretty insane about the level of detail – making sure they got it right, so there was the assumption that absolutely we had to be as accurate as possible.

He added: “We didn’t get them all right – we tried but it’s really hard to do, it’s very sad.

“We were up against things like, ‘Oh the light fixtures he put in the bathroom in Room 237 are not manufactured anymore,’ or we would find they would be too small.

“We had a few things where we couldn’t find out the exact dimensions of the chandeliers in one room so we had to do our best guess from the film.”

However, according to Flanagan, even some of the items used by Kubrick seemed to change throughout the film, and with different versions of the films available now, sometimes carpets, wallpaper and other elements look different in different versions.

He said: “We also bumped into a couple of those Kubrickian hiccups… we talked about the typewriter in the Colorado Lounge and the question was, ‘What colour is it?’

“Kubrick had multiple answers for that – the typewriter changes colour throughout The Shining.

“We had it for one scene so the question was, ‘How do you remember it?’

“When presented with a contradiction of which there were many and Kubrick was not afraid of at all, we made a decision based on how we who love the film remember it most, in the hope that while it may not be completely accurate, it would be close enough to hopefully the way you remember the film.

“But I guarantee you didn’t get everything right. It’s impossible.”

Doctor Sleep is in cinemas on October 31