What to know
Stanley Kubrick not only directed The Shining but also produced it, and he wrote the screenplay from Stephen King’s novel together with the novelist Diane Johnson. Filming took almost a year, from May 1978 to April 1979, and Warner Bros. released the film in the United States on 23 May 1980.
Nearly all of it was shot in England, on the soundstages of EMI Elstree Studios. The Overlook Hotel set, including a life-size copy of its exterior, was at the time the largest ever built there, and some of the interiors were modelled on the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. To shoot the scenes in loose chronological order, Kubrick kept all the sets standing on several stages for the whole production; in February 1979 a fire damaged the Colorado Lounge set and delayed the work.
The Shining was one of the first films shot with the Steadicam. Its inventor, Garrett Brown, worked on the film himself: this is how the shots of the camera racing low behind Danny as he rides his tricycle through the hotel corridors were made. A sequel, Doctor Sleep, followed in 2019, so watch it after The Shining.
