Cannes is coming, which means not only the film festival kicking off next week, but also the film market, in which upcoming productions will be sold for financing. One such project is The Life of Chuck, an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella about Charles Krantz, a 39-year-old man with a terminal diagnosis and a maybe-haunted childhood home. Tom Hiddleston will star as Chuck and Mark Hamill will play Albie, his grandfather. Mike Flanagan, of The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor and Midnight Mass fame, is writing and directing.
The script exists, but I do wonder if the writers’ strike might delay the potential production. Flanagan has been highly visible on the picket lines (pictured here with frequent collaborator Rahul Kohli, showing SAG-AFTRA support). The script is “done” except for all the ways in which it’s not, so it’s not likely Flanagan would go to work until the strike is settled. Never mind that he is also a director, and the directors might be on strike, too, by the end of June.
This project will undoubtedly sell like a hot cake, given the talent involved. It will also reunite Hamill and Flanagan, who just worked on The Fall of the House of Usher last year (it’s due out sometime later this year on Netflix). I am curious to see how Flanagan adapts the structure of the story, though, as The Life of Chuck is told through three short stories in the anthology If It Bleeds—a great read for the King-casual reader in your life—which run in reverse chronological order. There’s some timey-wimey stuff that could make for cool visuals, plenty of opportunity for ghosts, Tom Hiddleston playing a Tragic Man—this (potential) film has everything.
