About that 'Shining' prequel 'The Overlook Hotel'...

EW's King portrait, by Tyler Jacobson
Yesterday we reported a Deadline article that former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara might be writing a movie prequel to 1980 film The Shining for Warner Bros., to be titled The Overlook Hotel.

Well Entertainment Weekly called up their former pop culture columnist Stephen King (and, of course, author of The Shining novel) to see if this was even possible. See, EW correctly asks if WB, which released Kubrick's film, retains rights for additional movie adaptations -- and, specifically, rights to a section of the book that detailed the Overlook's history, but which was eventually cut from the final version.

Said King:
"There's a real question about whether or not they have the rights to 'Before the Play,' which was the prologue cut from the book — because the epilogue to the book was called 'After the Play.' So they were bookends, and there was really scary stuff in that prologue that wouldn't make a bad movie. Am I eager to see that happen? No I am not. And there's some real question about what rights Warner Bros. does still have. The Shining is such an old book now that the copyright comes back to me. Arguably, the film rights lapse — so we’ll see. We’re looking into that."
But King did add that he's not necessarily going to stop a film project from happening because "I'm sort of a nice guy."

And maybe that's why he's the King.

-Aaron Sagers