Stanley Kubrick famously adapted Stephen King’s novel The Shining into a horror movie of the same name, but he made so many changes to the story that it isn’t seen as a proper adaptation of the novel – and Kubrick actually refused to read the script King had written for The Shining's movie adaptation. Many of Stephen King’s works have been adapted to other media, some successfully and others not so much, and some, like Kubrick’s The Shining, have earned a spot in film history, but not without a good dose of controversy.
Kubrick’s The Shining took the characters and the basis of King’s story to make a psychological horror movie now regarded among the greatest movies ever made, but there were a lot of controversies behind-the-scenes. In addition to Kubrick’s well-documented perfectionism and how he treated Shelley Duvall during the production of The Shining, Kubrick refused to read the script that King himself had written for the adaptation of his own novel, and the legendary director gave different reasons to justify his decision.
Stanley Kubrick Considered Stephen King’s Writing “Weak”
Stanley Kubrick reportedly once described Stephen King’s writing as “weak”, which was part of his reasoning for not even taking a look at King’s script for The Shining. Kubrick’s other reasons for not reading Stephen King’s script and instead writing his own was that King’s was a too literal adaptation of the novel – after all, it was an adaptation of his own novel. In addition to that, Kubrick explained he didn’t believe in ghost stories because that implied “the possibility that there was something after death” and he didn’t believe in any of that – however, he called King to say he believed ghost stories were fundamentally optimistic precisely because they suggested the existence of life after death, but when King brought up the concept of hell, Kubrick said he didn’t believe in it.
Kubrick ended up using The Shining novel just as a jumping-off point for the story he wanted to tell, so he saw no point in reading King’s script and collaborating with him on a new screenplay. Instead, Kubrick wrote his own script with Diane Johnson, who also looked down on Stephen King’s writing, calling The Shining “not part of great literature”. In the end, Kubrick and Johnson’s script was definitely effective as it made way for an unsettling tale of a family trapped in a hotel and the many spirits living in it, but it failed to capture the essence of the novel and thus what made it scary and special.
What Stephen King Thinks About Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
Of course, the biggest controversy around Kubrick’s The Shining is Stephen King’s response to it. King has said that Kubrick definitely made a memorable movie, but as an adaptation of his novel, it wasn’t good, even saying that of all the adaptations of his novel, it’s the one he could “ hating”. In his 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre, King called Kubrick’s The Shining a “maddening, perverse, and disappointing film”, but it retained “a brilliance that is inarguable”. King has also been open about the changes Kubrick made to the story and characters, explaining his vision of Jack Torrance and the forces haunting the hotel, which are completely different from the ones Kubrick presented.
Had Kubrick read Stephen King’s The Shining script, he might have taken a couple of ideas that would have made his movie a bit more loyal to the source material, but it also might have brought even more tension to his relationship with King. In the end, while Stanley Kubrick made one of the greatest horror movies and Stephen King wrote one of the best horror novels, the movie adaptation of The Shining and the book are two different entities.
