Reasons why this movie bombed

All good points. King's name is definitely not the must-see selling point it was 30 years ago. In fact, I daresay the opposite is implied. I love Ewan but he's not an A List star. He can't open a big film on his smile and charm alone. Doctor Sleep was not a huge book that blew up with either critics or fans. Which I like fine, by the way. It's a solidly okay book. Which i'm sure is what this film is. But the biggest problem was the marketing made this look boring as hell. Even King's tweet about it, which was like "go check it out, dig the vibe." Dig the vibe?? My lord if the vibe is all this movie has going on, then this movie has nothing going on.

1) It's as long as it needed to be to tell the story. The Shining was only nine minutes shorter and actually had a simpler storyline, slower pace.

2) Somewhat true, though in fact King's name never was a guarantee of box office success. It doesn't hurt, though.

3) You're in the minority there. Having actually read Doctor Sleep, I can say it was pretty good imo, and I'm not alone. It's got 4 1/2 stars on Amazon from nearly 10,000 reviews. I think the consensus of King's readers is that it's one of the better novels from the latter half of his career. You might not have liked it, but it doesn't have a reputation as a failure.

4) Probably not. He's a great character actor though.

5) Did you see the movie? Sets, special effects. 50 million is not a particularly high budget these days. Certainly having the money to pull off convincing effects won't cause a movie to bomb. This criticism is pretty nonsensical.

6) Valid . They were a bit misleading, considering how this story really didn't resemble the one in the shining very much. People might have thought they'd be getting a rehash, judging by the trailers. I suppose the marketing dept. wanted to make people aware that this was a sequel to the Shining, but they overdid it.

I'd also add that the movie isn't quite the disaster some are making it out to be. It was number one at the box office. 50 million is not a huge budget by modern standards, and when it's all said and done it won't be a massive money loser for the studio.

I think at very least they could have released around Halloween. I still dont understand why they didnt, definitely would have made more in that time-frame.

I pretty much agree with all these points. The first point being the most important. I told someone recently that this movie's curse was that it had only 4 showings throughout the day because of its length. A film that long should have a short run in theaters and then be shown on Netflix.

For me, I am a big fan of the Kubrick Shining film, and I had zero faith of this new film even coming close to the artistry of that film. Also, and this is petty, but.... the title “doctor sleep” is just plain stupid and does nothing to entice me.

It's not an accesible film, if you compare it with other mainstream horror movies. Also, it doesn't work as a standalone one.