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The trailer for 'The Shining' sequel 'Doctor Sleep' takes us back to the Overlook Hotel

The trailer for The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep has got horror fans’ blood pumping.

The creepy clip makes several references to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic and sees a grown up Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, struggling with flashbacks from his violent past.

The new movie is an adaptation of the best-selling Stephen King novel of the same name, and is set years after the initial film. Watch the trailer above.

The Shining starred Danny Lloyd as the young Danny Torrance, who along with his mother, played by Shelley Duvall, and father played by Jack Nicholson, stay in a remote hotel during the off-season.

Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance in the Warner Bros. Pictures’ supernatural thriller “DOCTOR SLEEP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance in the Warner Bros. Pictures’ supernatural thriller “DOCTOR SLEEP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Kubrick won plaudits for the taut, overbearing atmosphere of the film, which saw Nicholson play the terrifying father who is filled with the murderous rage of the sinister Overlook Hotel.

In Doctor Sleep, Dan Torrance is still living with psychic powers, or the Shine, as it is known, and is struggling with alcoholism, something his father, Jack Torrance, battled in the original 1977 book.

Read more: Was The Shining Kubrick’s moon landing confession?

Though Kubrick’s interpretation of King’s novel has gone down in movie history as one of the all-time great horror films, the final cut was an almost entirely different beast to the novel - something King was not entirely happy about.

American actors Jack Nicholson, Danny Lloyd and Shelley Duvall on the set of The Shining, based on the novel by Stephen King, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. (Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
American actors Jack Nicholson, Danny Lloyd and Shelley Duvall on the set of The Shining, based on the novel by Stephen King, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. (Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Now Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan is hopeful of keeping both King, and fans of the Kubrick classic, happy with the sequel.

Read more: The weirdest Kubrick theories

While talking to journalists about the upcoming movie, Flanagan was asked which version of The Shining his film would be a sequel to, he said: “The answer’s really complicated. The answer to all of those questions for us has always been yes, it is an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep, which is Stephen King’s sequel to his novel, The Shining. But this also exists very much in the same cinematic universe that Kubrick established in his adaptation of The Shining.

Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance in the Warner Bros. Pictures’ supernatural thriller “DOCTOR SLEEP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance in the Warner Bros. Pictures’ supernatural thriller “DOCTOR SLEEP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

“I went back to the book first and the big conversation that we had to have was about whether or not we could still do a faithful adaptation of the novel as King has laid it out while inhabiting the universe that Kubrick had created,” Flanagan explained.

“And that was a conversation that we had to have with Stephen King to kick the whole thing off. And if that conversation hadn’t gone the way it went, we wouldn’t have done the film.”

The UK teaser poster for <i>Doctor Sleep</i>. (WB)
The UK teaser poster for Doctor Sleep. (WB)

Here’s the official synopsis in full: Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.”

Instinctively recognising that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality. Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose.

Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past.

Doctor Sleep, which also stars Rebecca Ferguson, will be released in November.