The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Warner Bros. Pictures is "exploring the possibility of a prequel to 'The Shining.'"

Writer/producer Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Avatar) and her partners Bradley Fischer and James Vanderbilt would produce the new film, according to the newspaper.

Directed, co-written and co-produced by Stanley Kubrick, the 1980 release is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King and starred Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd.

Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, who's come to the elegant, isolated Overlook Hotel as off-season caretaker with his wife (Duvall) and son (Lloyd). Torrance has never been there before - or has he? The answer lies in a ghostly time warp of madness and murder. The prequel would naturally focus on what happened before Torrance and his family arrived at the Overlook Hotel in original.

A Warner Bros. spokeswoman cautioned the newspaper that the prequel "was in a very early stage and not even formally in development."