Over the weekend an upcoming Stephen King movie adaptation took home a prestigious award, one that carries major implciations for the Oscars in just a few short months. The new film from Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game director Mike Flanagan, The Life of Chuck, was awarded the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. On paper this may not sound like the biggest deal, but for the past twelve years, without fail, the winner of TIFF’s audience award has gone on to be a Best Picture nominee at The Academy Awards, with a few films even winning.
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What is The Life of Chuck movie?
Based on the novella that appears in the Stephen King book If It Bleeds, The Life of Chuck is told in reverse order, a structure that is kept for the feature film adaptation, starting with a man’s death and moving all the way back to his childhood. Though it may flirt with the horror genre in places, the TIFF official website notes that the film has a secret weapon, “finding warmth in melancholy.”
Marvel’s Loki star Tom Hiddleston stars as the titular “Chuck” in the movie, flanked by a host of notable stars from major franchise movies including Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Matthew Lillard, and David Dastmalchian. Fan-favorite recurring players from Mike Flanagan’s other projects also appear in The Life of Chuck including Jacob Tremblay, Annalise Basso, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Michael Trucco, Violet McGraw, Molly C. Quinn, Heather Langenkamp, and, naturally, Kate Siegel.
The TIFF People’s Choice Award usually means Oscar nods
Since 2012, the winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award has secured at minimum a Best Picture nomination, including:
- Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
- 12 Years a Slave (2013) – Won Best Picture Oscar
- The Imitation Game (2014)
- Room (2015)
- La La Land (2016)
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
- Green Book (2018) – Won Best Picture Oscar
- Jojo Rabbit (2019)
- Nomadland (2020) – Won Best Picture Oscar
- Belfast (2021)
- The Fabelmans (2022)
- American Fiction (2023)
Even though the 2011 winner, Where Do We Go Now?, didn’t nab an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, the three films that preceded it all did, including The King’s Speech (2010), Precious (2009), and Slumdog Millionaire (2008). This means that fifteen of the last sixteen winners of the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award have become Best Picture nominees.
The only thing currently standing in the way of The Life of Chuck is that the movie does not have a distributor. Granted, after taking home a major award like the TIFF Audience prize it’s almost certain that studios will be trying to make a deal for the project, especially since it carries the weight of potential Oscar gold.
“I woke up this morning to my phone just vibrating across my night stand as I was missing call after call to share this incredible news,” Mike Flanagan said in a video after the news was shared. “I am completely unprepared for this moment, completely overwhelmed by it. The Life of Chuck is a movie about joy and about meeting those moments in your life that make joy and I was completely blindsided by this one. But I’m just overwhelmed and so grateful and so glad that this movie connected with audiences the way we always hoped it would. So thank you to the audiences that came out and opened up your hearts to Chuck and thank you to TIFF for presenting and bringing this movie to its audience, and thank you to everyone who worked so hard on it over the course of the last year. I am absolutely beside myself with happiness and gratitude. Thank you all, so, so much.”
Stephen King movies at The Oscars
Though fans almost exclusively think of King’s work as being in the horror genre, and most of it is, three of the five King adaptations that have been nominated for Academy Awards weren’t classified that way at all. These include: Stand By Me, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay; The Green Mile, nominated for Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Best Picture; and The Shawshank Redemption, nominated for Best Sound, Best Original Score, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Morgan Freeman), and Best Picture.
The two Stephen King adaptations to earn Oscar nods that are clearly horror movies include Carrie, nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Piper Laurie) and Best Actress (Sissy Spacek); with Misery earning a Best Actress nomination for star Kathy Bates. To date, Kathy Bates is the only nominee from a Stephen King adaptation to win the Oscar.
The path is clear for The Life of Chuck to make its way toward the Oscars, and it would be a major win for genre filmmaker Mike Flanagan.
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