If you asked 100 people to name their favorite Stephen King adaptations, then the smart money would be on The Shining cropping up more often than not given its status as a certified cinematic classic.
However, if you were to ask Stephen King to name his favorite Stephen King adaptations, there’s a distinct chance the legendary author wouldn’t even include Stanley Kubrick’s all-time great on his Top 10. In fact, he might be one of the very few who deems the 1997 miniseries as the superior version.
To be fair, that’s not a shock when it’s a lot more faithful to the source material, but on the other side of the coin there are no doubt a lot of folks out there completely in the dark that ABC’s three-part event even exists given the monolithic status of its predecessor.
Even star Steven Weber got a little too caught up in the excitement, revealing on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast that he doesn’t think he delivered his best work as a result.
“I really wish I could go back with what I know now about myself and what it’s like to be a flawed human being and attack those scenes again. It wasn’t taxing; I was having too much fun. I was too excited to be there. And it’s good! It’s more than good. The King faithful prefer it to Kubrick’s film, but the Kubrick film is obviously this iconic, fantastic… it’s a great movie. It’s not Stephen King’s movie.”
It’s definitely one worth tracking down for King aficionados, but The Shining V2.0 will always be cursed by the fact it’ll never be the most famous spin on the source material, which is no great shame when Kubrick’s work is held in such high regard.