Former 'Walking Dead' showrunner Mazzara writing 'Shining' prequel - and it might be cool

Former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara is checking into The Overlook Hotel, reports Deadline. Mazzara, who was dismissed from TWD in December, is writing a prequel to the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film The Shining for Warner Bros.

Although my fanboy eyebrow (my fanbrow?) arches skeptically anytime I hear about a remake, reboot, re-imagining or long dormany prequel, this kind of makes sense. Long before the Torrance family moved into the Overlook for a really bad winter, the hotel had a notorious history. In Stephen King's 1977 novel alone, the hotel was the site of illnesses, tragic deaths, the murder-suicide of a family, gangland-style murders, ghost children, snakelike fire hoses, zombie wasps, evil topiaries and, oh yeah, is kind of an extension of Hell.

Mazzara could use a prequel to play with a lot of this material that never made it into Kubrick's film (which also had a funky masquerade swinger party and Indian burial ground)...

'Room 237' doc puts 'The Shining' in the spotlight

The Shining is undoubtedly one of the creepiest and most controversial horror movies ever made. It is well-documented that Shining author Stephen King actually said that Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation was not a good one and that it's the only adaptation of one of his novels that he could "remember hating."

Now enter Room 237, a new documentary that examines the cult of The Shining and depicts just how crazy it has drives critics, even 32 years later. But Rodney Ascher's Room 237 also utilizes Kubrick's film as a basis to examine film critique, and the tendency of critics to add meaning, decipher subtext and interpret clues where there may be none.

This flick has been picking up a lot of buzz, and it should be especially fun since Kubrick (1928-1999) was notorious for his long shoots and perfectionism, and has been the focus of much critical ink. The embedded trailer doesn't clue us in much on what the film includes other than its rave reviews, but we're liking what we are seeing - the poster (rocking the Overlook Hotel's carpet pattern) is pretty cool too.

-Larissa Mrykalo