Why Doctor Sleep Bombed At The Box Office

The Doctor is in... trouble.

The Stephen King adaptation Doctor Sleep, which functions as a direct sequel to Stanley Kubrick's classic The Shining, tanked at the box office over the Veteran's Day weekend. The only thing resembling a silver lining: it wasn't alone.

The movie, which adapts King's 2013 novel of the same name, arrived in theaters with a sterling pedigree. It was directed by Mike Flanagan, who was at the helm of the excellent Gerald's Game, a Netflix original which ported over another of the master's works to the screen; King himself gave Doctor Sleep a ringing endorsement, and a great many horror fans consider The Shining to be among the greatest fright flicks of all time.

All of these things considered, the story of a now-adult Danny Torrance still coming to terms with his unique powers - and the harrowing events which took place during his childhood stay at the Overlook Hotel - was expected to clean up to the tune of $25 to $30 million dollars domestic. Shockingly, it came nowhere close to that total, pulling in an absolutely anemic $14.1 million dollars at the stateside box office.

It was a disheartening development for studio Warner Bros., as good reviews and word of mouth weren't nearly enough to prop up Doctor Sleep. The movie was kept out of the weekend's top spot by Roland Emmerich's historical drama Midway, which has received mixed-to-negative critical notices and claimed victory with a $17.5 million haul, which itself is not exactly impressive.

Considering that September's It: Chapter Two underperformed pretty severely for the studio compared with its 2017 predecessor, the failure of Doctor Sleep could be indicative of a trend: the beginning of the end of the King Renaissance, which has seen such properties as The Mist, Mr. Mercedes, Pet Sematary, and In the Tall Grass successfully adapted for screens large and small in just the last few years. A slew of additional King adaptations are currently in the works, including television series based on The Stand and Lisey's Story, and feature films based on Salem's Lot, The Long Walk, and From a Buick 8.

It should be said that Doctor Sleep might have had a bit more success if moviegoers hadn't inexplicably decided to stay away from the theater altogether over the weekend. A little quick math reveals that the top two movies of Veterans' Day weekend 2019 only managed about a $32 million dollar domestic haul, and when we compare and contrast with the same weekend in recent years, the difference is downright eye-popping.

Consider that during the same frame in 2018, Universal and Illumination's animated feature The Grinch topped the box office with a whopping $67.6 million gross, more than twice the total that Doctor Sleep and Midway combined for. The Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody came in second during that frame with $31.2 million, a respectable total that this year's top two just barely managed to eclipse. Keep watching the video to see why Doctor Sleep bombed at the box office!

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