Director Mike Flanagan is set to bring his latest Stephen King adaptation to TIFF later this year, but before that the filmmaker reveals one of the hardest things to shoot in The Life of Chuck.
Starring Tom Hiddelston as Charles “Chuck” Krantz, the movie brings to life King’s 2020 novella, first published in his short story collection If It Bleeds. This will be Flanagan’s third adaptation based on the works of the acclaimed author following the 2017 Netflix hit Gerald’s Game and 2019’s Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining.
On his brand-new podcast, Director’s Commentary with Mike Flanagan, guests Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin provide commentary during a watch-along of their 2019 film Ready or Not. During the recording, Flanagan discussed The Life of Chuck and a scene that required resorting to digital effects due to “safety issues.”
“I did a movie [The Life of Chuck] last year where the biggest art department challenge we had was putting up a billboard. I was like, it’s a flat image that just needs to stand up. We ended up doing it digitally. I was like, we couldn’t achieve having a flat thing. It was just the size of it, and it had to be on top of a building, and the logistics of that…there was some safety [issues], there was some questions about the roof itself, about wind, about power lines nearby.”
The billboard in question plays a prominent role in the film, which – if it follows King’s novella – opens with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character, Marty, seeing billboards all over town celebrating the retirement of Chuck Krantz from his banking job after 39 years. While Flanagan had ideas about how to shoot the prop, in the end it just didn’t work:
“I was like, ‘Guys, we can solve this.’ You don’t even have to mount it. We can just lift it up and hold it still for five seconds and lower it down. It was just one of these things where the whole time…and we ended up with the digital option where I was just like ‘This just feels like we’ve missed so many opportunities to do this a better way.'”
What Other Stephen King Projects Are in the Works?
The Life of Chuck is just one in a long line of Stephen King adaptations that are in the works right now. We know that Longlegs director Osgood Perkins will bring his adaptation of The Monkey to the big screen in February 2025, and Max is bringing the long-awaited Salem’s Lot adaptation to streaming later this year, despite the movie initially being touted by Warner Bros. as a theatrical release.
There are a number of other feature films based on King’s works in the pipeline right now, including The Long Walk from Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, as well as a new adaptation of The Running Man (previously adapted into the 1988 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) which has set Shaun of the Dead filmmaker Edgar Wright as its director, with Scott Pilgrim vs the World scribe Michael Bacall penning the script.
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The Life of Chuck: Mike Flanagan & Karen Gillan Reunite After a Decade for Stephen King Adaptation
Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck has him working with Karen Gillan again after 10 years.
In terms of small screen offerings, following in the footsteps of Castle Rock, Welcome to Derry will see Bill Skarsgård return to explore the early days of Pennywise the Clown in the new HBO series which is set to debut in 2025. There’s also a spin-off of The Shining, titled Overlook, from J.J. Abrams which was originally thought to land at Max, but the 10-episode series has since been picked up by Netflix. No premiere date has been set just yet.
Check out our interview below with
The Life of Chuck
co-star Karen Gillan and the cast of
Late Bloomers
where she touched on the Stephen King adaptation.