“The Shining”, the classic horror, will be seen in the theater, with Ben Stiller in the memorable role played by Jack Nicholson

Jack Torrance will once again cause terror at the Overlook Hotel, this time on stage and played by Ben Stiller. The character of The Shining, which Jack Nicholson performed in the unforgettable film of Stanley Kubrick, will once again obsessively write his one-sentence novel (“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”) in the snowy solitude of Stephen King's classic.

The adaptation of Ivo van Hove will begin rehearsals around October 2022 and will debut in January 2023 in London's West End. It is expected — although it has not been announced — that it will also be performed in a Broadway venue, New York.

According to Deadline, Van Hove (whose last work on Broadway was West Side Story, before the pandemic) will be in charge of the creative team in which Simon Stephens, winner of the Tony Award, stands out as responsible for the dramaturgy starting from the novel. The work, which had begun to take shape in 2017, was interrupted by COVID-19, but was reactivated with the reopening of the rooms.

Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, producers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Harry Potter and the Cursed Legacy), currently on Broadway, will be responsible for producing this production. Friedman is also working on the musical Funny Girl (starring Beanie Feldstein) and announced that he will soon join the making of a new version of Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice, directed by Van Hove and performed by Ruth Wilson, also for the West End.

Although best known as an actor (The Royal Tenenbaums, My Girlfriend Polly, A Night at the Museum) and director (Zoolander, The Cable Guy), Stiller has also worked on the Broadway stages: in 2011 he starred with Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The House of Blue Leaves. This time he will be the protagonist of a story that, according to people close to the project, will be closer to King's book, published in 1977, than to Kubrick's film, released in 1980.

The Shining would continue the series of high-profile works that Van Hove has made, at the same time as other more experimental works, such as his reinterpretation of West Side Story. In 2019, he directed Bryan Cranston on Network and Gillian Anderson and Lily James on All About Eve.

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