There's a trend happening in Ewan McGregor's past few roles: he's continuously played older versions of characters. In T2 Trainspotting, he portrayed the older version of Mark Renton, the same character he played in the 1996 original. Then, he tackled an adult version of Christopher Robin in the eponymous live-action film with Winnie the Pooh and the rest of the gang. Next, he's slated to portray an older version of Danny Torrance. The character first appeared in Stephen King's 1977 novel, The Shining, and later in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1980 horror film.
McGregor will portray Torrance in an adaptation of King's 2013 sequel, Doctor Sleep. "I'm the guy," McGregor told Seth Meyers about the trend his roles have taken on. "I don't know why that is but I quite like it. It'll be interesting with Danny because again, here he exists in the novel so I have to try to get him right based on the novel and Stephen's writing and fans of the book and that's slightly different in this case. Nobody really knows what Christopher Robin was like when he was 40-something years old so it wasn't the pressure on me as such."
As for the Shining sequel, he's hoping to please King fans and Kubrick fans alike. "It's a wonderful story. What'll be interesting about it is that there's The Shining the movie, and then Stephen King's novel. The story is he wasn't very fond of the movie, and so it'll be interesting to see, 'cause this is quite a faithful adaptation of his novel, Doctor Sleep. But it'll be interesting to see how fans of the movie take it versus fans of the novel and if we can please everybody we'll see."
He said there's a "great, great script" by writer and director Mike Flanagan, who last fall released on Netflix an adaptation of the supposedly unfilmable '92 King novel Gerald's Game. In 2016 he wrote, directed, and edited Hush, Before I Wake, and Ouija: Origin of Evil. This year he has a Haunting of Hill House Netflix series on the way.
McGregor also spoke about the live-action Winnie the Pooh film, Christopher Robin, which was released in theaters today, Aug. 3:
