Most of us are at least generally familiar with the concept of an “elevator pitch.” Whether starting a new business or trying to make a movie, it refers to the concept of selling someone on your idea in the short time it takes to ride an elevator. Well, a new project from Intrepid Films doesn’t need an elevator. It doesn’t even need a step ladder. All it needs to do is share its all-star list of names working on the project. Because a list including “Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Mike Flanagan, and Stephen King” is among the easiest sales jobs in movie history.
Deadline reports horror luminaries Mike Flanagan and Stephen King are joining forces. Flanagan will direct, write, and produce a film adaptation of King’s novella “The Life of Chuck.”
The author published it in his 2020 anthology If It Bleeds. King’s official website describes “The Life of Chuck” as “three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house.”
Flanagan completed the script before the WGA went on strike, and the movie is already in development. Per Deadline, it recently went into production under an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA. Loki’s Hiddleston will play the doomed Chuck, with Hamill joining him as Albie. This will be the latest project between the Star Wars legend and director. Hamill also stars in Flanagan’s The House of Usher at Netflix. Joining Hiddleston and Hamill in the Flanagan cast of this Stephen King adaptation are Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan and Jacob Tremblay. Their roles in The Life of Chuck are currently unknown.
Don’t expect a true horror film. Deadline also states the movie will “draw tonally” from previous King adaptations such as Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile.
That’s more than fine by us. “Mike Flanagan directs Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill in a Stephen King adaptation that reminds us of The Shawshank Redemption” is such a good elevator pitch that the elevator doesn’t even have to move to get us onboard.
Originally published on May 9, 2023.
