The making of The Shining, considered “The World’s Scariest Movie”, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of modern horror is now told in a book for collectors, with only 1000 copies printed.

In 1966 Stanley Kubrick told a friend that he wanted to make “the world’s scariest movie.” A decade later Stephen King’s The Shining landed on the director’s desk, and a visual masterpiece was born. For King the horror novel The Shinning, from 1977,  his third published novel and first hardback bestseller, was a game changer; its success firmly established King as a preeminent author in the horror genre.

For Stanley Kubrick it was the achievement of a goal, as recognized by the newspapers immediately after the film was launched: “The Shining may be the first movie that ever made its audience jump with a title that simply says, ‘Tuesday,’” proclaimed The New York Times. Never has a film evoked so much dread in its audience with so little gore than Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the 1977 novel by the master of terror himself, Stephen King, where true horror lies in the darkest corners of domesticity and isolation.

Now, 57 years after Kubrick enunciated his goal and 43 years after The Shining made it to theaters, Taschen publishes the definitive book about the movie. It’s, according to the publishing house, the “definitive compendium of the film that transformed the horror genre”, featuring “hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, rare production ephemera from the Kubrick Archive, and extensive new interviews with the cast and crew.”

Endless rounds of script rewrites

“You must read this book. And then watch The Shining again the second you put the book down. And I don’t care if you’ve seen it 50 times, you will never see it the same way again. It’s going to change everything” said Steven Spielberg, who writes the foreword for the book. In fact, a box with 2 volumes and an ephemera set including facsimile reproductions and original artwork booklets,  36.5 x 42.4 cm, 19.9 kg (43.8 lb), 2198 pages, a Collector’s Edition of 1,000 numbered copies, with a price of US$ 1,500.

Conceived and edited by Academy Award-winning director Lee Unkrich, dubbed by The Hollywood Reporter as “the world’s foremost Shining aficionado,” with text by best-selling author J.W. Rinzler and the foreword, as mentioned above, by Steven Spielberg, this limited Collector’s Edition is the definitive compendium of the film that transformed the horror genre.

Equally a study of the intricate mechanics of Kubrick’s genius as an in-depth look at the making of a visual masterpiece, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining gathers hundreds of hours of exclusive new interviews with the cast and crew in an unprecedented look at the 1980 cult classic. Slip in through the back door of The Overlook Hotel to witness Kubrick’s endless rounds of script rewrites, his revolutionary use of the Steadicam, the mechanics behind the infamous blood elevator, the mysterious mid-filming fire at Elstree Studios, and the countless takes needed to satisfy the meticulous force that was Kubrick.

The other Kubrick books

Taschen shared some information about the authors behind the project of this book, so here it is, for those who want all the information:

The designer

M/M (Paris) is an art and design partnership consisting of Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag. Their portfolio includes art direction and collaborations with Björk, Balenciaga, and Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, as well as with magazines including Vogue Paris, Interview, and Purple Fashion.

The author

W. Rinzler(1962–2021) authored more than 20 books, three New York Timesbestsellers and a London Times bestseller, including The Making of Star Wars, The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, and the best-selling graphic novel The Star Wars. He was executive editor at Lucasfilm for 15 years. His The Making of Alien won Best Translated Work on Cinema from Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma. His most recent novels were the space age historical thriller, All Up and Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life.

The editor

Lee Unkrich is the Academy Award-winning director of the animated features Toy Story 3 and Coco. During his 25 years at Pixar Animation Studios, he played a variety of key creative roles on nearly every feature film made at the studio. Unkrich and his fellow Pixar directors were honored at the 66th Venice International Film Festival with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (ISBN 978-3-8365-7717-5) is available on pre-order now. According to the webpage at Taschen dedicated to this new edition around Kubrick’s work, the book will be available next March. Taschen has also published other books about Stanley Kubrick’s work, which are more accessible, if you do not want to invest in this Collector’s Edition. Follow the link to find those other books… and some, even more expensive collector editions, like  the monolith shaped The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, priced at US$ 2,000, which is sold out.