Now in theatres (and expanding to more next Friday) is The Life of Chuck, the latest Stephen King adaptation from Mike Flanagan, who has previously been at the helm of the Stephen King adaptations Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep (and is also developing series adaptations of The Dark Tower and Carrie for Amazon Studios) – but this one is not a horror movie. JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray got to see the movie a while back (you can read his 7/10 review HERE) and described it as a “bittersweet tearjerker.” The film is based on the short story from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds, and now that the story has been given the film treatment, it’s being re-released on its own. There are 128 page hardcover and Kindle editions making their way out into the world on June 10th, along with a 2 hour audiobook (you can purchase those releases at THIS LINK). King wrote an introduction for this new release of The Life of Chuck, and you can watch him read the introduction in the video embedded at the bottom of this article.
The Life of Chuck consists of three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house. Here’s the official synopsis: A life-affirming, genre-bending story based on Stephen King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz.
Tom Hiddleston (Loki) is playing Chuck, with Mark Hamill (Star Wars) playing a character named Albie. They are joined in the cast by Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Jacob Tremblay (The Predator), Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Kate Siegel (Hush), Benjamin Pajak (Past My Bedtime), Trinity Jo-Li Bliss (Avatar: The Way of Water), Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World), Antonio Raul Corbo (Into the Dark: Pilgrim), Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows), Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep), Annalise Basso (Ouija: Origin of Evil), Samantha Sloyan (The Midnight Club), Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass), Matt Biedel (Aliens Abducted My Parents), Sauriyan Sapkota (The Fall of the House of Usher), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (The Haunting of Hill House), Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica), Violet McGraw (M3GAN), Molly C. Quinn (Castle), and Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street). Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) and David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil) are also in there. Gillan has called the movie “a beautiful masterpiece,” and Dastmalchian described it as “a beautiful, heartfelt drama.”
Will you be catching The Life of Chuck on the big screen this month? Watch Stephen King’s new introduction to the story, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
