Just one week after the people behind Terminator: Dark Fate got a stark lesson in franchise narrative management, another sequel playing up its connections to a beloved '80s classic under performed at the box office.

Doctor Sleep, which marketed itself as a sequel to the iconic 1980 horror classic The Shining, could only muster up $14 million in its opening weekend. The Stephen King novel adaptation was unexpectedly out-grossed by Roland Emmerich's generic war movie throwback Midway, which took in around $17 million.

It's a highly disappointing result for the Mike Flanagan written-and-directed horror starring Ewan McGregor as the grown-up version of Danny Torrance; the iconic little boy in The Shining. The prospect of a sequel to The Shining would cause dollar signs to appear in the eyes of any movie executive (especially after the huge success of King’s It movie adaptations), and joy to manifest in the heart of any horror fan, but the film has a slightly more complicated relationship to the Stanley Kubrick classic than the word “sequel” might have you believe.

Stephen King, who wrote the books both movies are based on, has never been shy about his (singular) opinion that Kubrick botched the adaptation of his novel. His grievance was such that he even produced his own TV mini-series adaptation of the book, which aired on ABC in 1997.

When King wrote and released Doctor Sleep in 2013, he specifically (and quite reasonably) tied it directly to his book, and not Kubrick's film.

Also quite reasonably, Flanagan and the backers of Doctor Sleep's film adaptation wanted to reference Kubrick's work, as that is the widely-known cinematic language of The Shining. Flanagan sought King's blessing to meld Kubrick with King in the Doctor Sleep movie, and by all accounts King—who is known for (mostly) being pragmatic about other people adapting and re-interpreting his work—granted it.

All of that didn't change the fact that the plot of Doctor Sleep, both in King and Flanagan's conception, isn't exactly what pops into your head when you hear the words: “Sequel to The Shining”.

It's not another family visiting the Overlook or anything like that. The structure and tone is very different to The Shining. In fact, Flanagan somewhat honours King's original intentions with The Shining by making the new film, in many ways, about alcoholism and recovery.

Although the Overlook Hotel eventually shows up in the movie (it's not in the book), the narrative has gone out of its way to include it. It's not jarring, but it's not exactly organic, either.

The marketing for Doctor Sleep sought to gloss over the film's complicated relationship to its two competing forbearers, and be a The Shining 2 in some ways. That the film tries to be both, and something else as well, could've hurt its chances at really clicking with the audience.

Along with Terminator: Dark Fate's dark fate, this speaks to the lessening box office power of nostalgia, which drives a scarily large percentage of modern popular narrative. So if the lesson here is that nostalgia isn't bringing audiences in anymore, then that's a good thing for storytelling. 

Which is proven by a smaller film in limited release currently making waves at the box office. It’s worth noting, for how it centers around the redemptive power of narrative.

Honey Boy is an autobiographical film written by and starring Shia LaBeouf as a character based on his own father. The film follows a child TV star, Otis (Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges at 12 and 22), and his dysfunctional relationship with his abusive father James (LaBeouf).

Clearly an act of artistic catharsis for LaBeouf, the film even features a scene where a psychologist recommends that the alcoholic Otis write down his story, an undertaking that resulted in the film we're watching.

Honey Boy earned a respectable take at four theaters over the weekend, and is continuing to generate buzz for LaBeouf and director Alma Har'el. It's a reminder of just how powerful stories about telling stories can be.