Doctor Sleep casts a ‘shining’ young star as Abra Stone

Doctor Sleep (Movie)

type

Movie

Genre

Horror

release date

01/24/20

performer

Ewan McGregor

director

Mike Flanagan

Current Status

In Season

The Doctor Sleep movie has found its Abra Stone. Kyliegh Curran, the young actress who appeared as Nala in Broadway’s The Lion King and in the indie film I Can I Will I Did, has been cast in the key role for the film that’s based on Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining.

In the book, which was published in 2013, Abra is a girl with “the shining,” the same kind of psychic ability Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) retains.

Years after that fateful stay in the Overlook Hotel, Danny is all grown up and working as a hospice nurse. He’s using his powers to ease the suffering of patients, though he struggles with the same internal demons that afflicted his father. It’s during this time that he meets Abra, the new target of a nefarious cult that tortures children with “the shining” in order to feed off the “steam” they produce.

“Very excited about our Abra… shine on, Kyliegh,” writer-director Mike Flanagan confirmed on Twitter.

As King himself emphasized to EW when Doctor Sleep was first published, the story is a sequel to The Shining novel and not Stanley Kubrick’s film. “At the end of the Kubrick film, the Overlook is still there. It just kind of freezes. But at the end of the book, it burns down,” he said.

Curran joins McGregor in a cast that also features Carl Lumbly, Alex Essoe, and Zahn McClarnon in key roles, as well as Mission: Impossible – Fallout‘s Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, the leader of the cult.

Doctor Sleep will hit theaters on Jan. 24, 2020.

Deadline was the first to report the news.