The Shining: Book vs. Movie
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel. A winter caretaking job leaves the Torrance family isolated in the Overlook Hotel, where Danny’s psychic abilities reveal a growing danger.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
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The maze replaces animals made from hedges
The movie's hedge maze is a change from King's book. The book has bushes cut into animal shapes, which come to life. Kubrick replaces them with the maze outside the hotel and a model of it inside.
The movie also leaves the hotel's spaces unexplained. Its interiors could not fit inside the building shown from outside. Producer Jan Harlan said Kubrick deliberately allowed those contradictions in a ghost story.
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The hotel survives only in the movie
In the book, the neglected boiler explodes and destroys the Overlook. Jack dies, while Wendy, Danny, and Dick Hallorann escape. In the movie, Jack kills Hallorann and freezes after chasing Danny through the maze. Wendy and Danny escape; the hotel remains.
Co-writer Diane Johnson said Kubrick rejected the explosion because he thought it was too familiar an ending. He also wanted someone innocent to die, which led to Hallorann's changed fate.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Stephen King
- Year
- 1977
- Pages
- 688Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 15 hr 50 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Campbell Scott
Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaking job at the Overlook Hotel hoping to finish his play, stay sober, and repair his relationship with his wife and young son. Danny’s psychic abilities make him especially vulnerable to the hotel’s lingering evil, which begins working through Jack’s resentment as snow cuts the family off from help.
- Director
- Stanley Kubrick
- Writer
- Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
- Year
- 1980
- Runtime
- 1 hr 59 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
- Genre
- Drama, ghost, horror, Mystery, psychological drama, psychological horror, psychological thriller, supernatural horror, Suspense, Thriller
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
The Overlook Hotel is closing for winter, and young Danny Torrance already senses something wrong in its empty corridors. Snow traps him there with his parents as his father, Jack, becomes increasingly hostile and absorbed by the hotel’s past, leaving Wendy to recognize the danger inside the family before she can find a way out.
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