When does movie star Ben Stiller make his West End debut in The Shining?

The producers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are bringing a new stage adaptation of cult movie The Shining to the West End stage in January 2023.

And 55 year-old Ben Stiller is set to be starring in the lead, as crazed father Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie.

Ben Stiller is an American actor, comedian, writer, film director, and producer who has a net worth of $200 million but wants a shot at “real live acting”.

West End and Broadway mega producer Sonia Friedman and TV and stage impresario Colin Callender are teaming up again to produce The Shining, after their successful West End, Broadway and worldwide success with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – currently playing at the Palace Theatre in London.

The Shining will be directed by Belgium director Ivo van Hove, who has been busy staging a new adaptation of Cocteau’s The Human Voice starring The Affair’s Ruth Wilson, which plays at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 9 April 2022, and is also produced by Sonia Friedman. He also directed the West End and Broadway smash-hits A View from the Bridge, Network, West Side Story, and All About Eve at the Noel Coward Theatre starring Gillian Anderson and Lily James.

The stage adaptation is based on Stephen King’s classic 1977 horror novel The Shining, and will be by Tony winner Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). The novel was also famously adapted into the 1980 movie produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd.

Rehearsals for the West End production of The Shining are to begin in Autumn in London, with a premiere in January 2023. A Broadway transfer is also rumoured to be in the works.

A stage version of The Shining has been on the cards for years, with rumours first surfacing in 2017.

As well as The Shining and The Human Voice, Sonia Friedman produces long-runner The Book of Mormon in London, and forthcoming Funny Girl on Broadway starring Beanie Feldstein. It was also announced last week that she is producing her sister Maria’s project to direct Merrily We Roll Along in New York starring Daniel Radcliffe. Her company recently produced Leopoldstadt at the Wyndham’s Theatre and The Shark is Broken at the Ambassadors Theatre. Coming up in the West End she is producing Mark Rylance’s return to Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre; Rafe Spall in To Kill a Mockingbird at the Gielgud Theatre; The 47th at the Old Vic starring Bertie Carvell; and Oklahoma! at the Young Vic – surely a West End transfer.

Other casting for the show is yet to be announced.

Ben Stiller is no stranger to stage work, having played in the Broadway revival of John Guare’s House of Blue Leaves in 2011 with Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh.