Ben Stiller In Talks To Star In Ivo Van Hove Stage Adaptation Of Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’
EXCLUSIVE: A major new Ivo van Hove stage adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic The Shining is in the works for a 2023 West End debut, with an A-list creative team in place and Ben Stiller in talks to play the role of the crazed, haunted dad Jack Torrance.
Rehearsals are set to begin in the fall, with London performances targeted for January 2023. An eventual move to Broadway is expected.
Sources tell Deadline that director van Hove, last seen on Broadway pre-pandemic with the reworked West Side Story, will lead the creative team, with Tony winner Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and, most recently, Morning Sun starring Edie Falco) adapting the King novel. (Stephens also wrote the Sea Wall half of Sea Wall/A Life, with Tom Sturridge starring.)
Deadline first reported about a planned stage adaptation in 2017, and plans for a West End staging continued apace thereafter until the Covid pandemic shutdown of 2020. With the return of live theater, the project is back on track, with Stiller expected to take the role Jack Nicholson played in the 1980 film adaptation.
Producing will be Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, currently teamed up on Broadway with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Friedman is producing Broadway’s Funny Girl starring Beanie Feldstein, and the recently announced West End production of Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, to be directed by van Hove, starring Ruth Wilson.
Sources say the stage play of The Shining will adhere more closely with King’s 1977 book than Stanley Kubrick’s film, which in addition to Nicholson starred Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance and Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance.
The production would mark van Hove’s latest high-profile stage work, following his 2020 experimental reworking on Broadway of West Side Story, and his 2019 Broadway staging of Network starring the Tony-winning Bryan Cranston as anchorman Howard Beale. Van Hove also directed a 2019 West End adaptation of the 1950 Hollywood classic All About Eve starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James.
Additional casting and a production timeline for The Shining will be announced further down the road.
An eventual Broadway stand wouldn’t be Stiller’s first: In 2011, he starred in a Broadway revival of John Guare’s House of Blue Leaves opposite Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Stiller had played a supporting role in the original 1986 Broadway production of the play.
Nor would The Shining be Stiller’s first brush with King: In 2020, Stiller optioned rights to King’s novella Rat, with intentions to produce, direct and star in a feature film version. Rat tells the story of a frustrated writer who, in an apparent delirium, strikes a Faustian bargain with a rat to alleviate writer’s block, only to discover later that maybe he wasn’t delirious after all.
Deadline has reached out to Stiller’s reps for comment.
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