Are you excited for Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck yet? The movie is the third Stephen King adaptation from the filmmaker, and he has assembled a phenomenal cast to bring to life one of the author’s best recent novellas. There’s a lot to be hyped about with the project, and star Karen Gillan’s recent comments about the film only further raises expectations.
That’s just one story featured in this latest edition of The King Beat – alongside a bit from my interview with Late Night With The Devil star David Dastmalchian and a reflection on Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher – so let’s dig in!
Karen Gillan Has Seen Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, And It Left Her Emotionally Rocked
Mike Flanagan’s upcoming film The Life Of Chuck promises to be a completely different experience than the writer/director’s two previous Stephen King adaptations. While Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep are movies filled with tension and horror, the latest feature is going to be more of a meditative drama and has been compared by star Tom Hiddleston to Frank Darabont’s beloved The Shawshank Redemption. I imagine that there isn’t a King fan alive who isn’t over the moon with excitement about the feature – and Karen Gillan’s latest comments about it have only further fueled anticipation.
The Scottish actress last worked with Mike Flanagan a full decade ago (their film Oculus will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of its theatrical release next month), and she spoke about her latest collaboration with the filmmaker during a recent interview with Collider. In addition to noting that Flanagan hasn’t changed a great deal over the years, Gillan revealed that she has seen a very early version of The Life Of Chuck and that it apparently left her deeply emotionally affected. Said the Guardians of the Galaxy star,
You know what, it didn’t feel that different. I was going into it like, ‘OK, how has he changed? He’s done so many movies.’ [It] felt the same! We were back in Alabama like we’d never left. If there was any difference, I suppose he just felt more… I mean, he was relaxed on the first one, but maybe he wasn’t, he was just pretending to be relaxed. But no, he was just the same Mike Flanagan, and brilliant and the movie is absolutely incredible . I saw a not-finished version of it, and literally didn’t stop crying for days. In a good way.
The Life Of Chuck is based on the Stephen King novella of the same name, which was first published in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds. As written by King, the story plays out in three sections that take place in reverse chronological order and it explores both the internal and external existence of the titular Charles “Chuck” Krantz, who we first meet as he is dying from a brain tumor at the age of 39. It’s a somber tale about how life is both wondrous and fleeting, and Mike Flanagan has apparently captured the energy of the story in a moving way.
Because The Life Of Chuck has an unconditional structure, it’s not totally clear how Mike Flanagan plans to approach the story, but Karen Gillan added that the powerful themes from the novella all remain intact from the source material:
It’s a cathartic experience. It’s someone dealing with the end of their life, and it’s told in a very imaginative way, and it’s just beautiful. It’s a celebration of life, I suppose. I think we could all do with a bit of that.
In addition to Karen Gillan and the aforementioned Tom Hiddleston, the excellent cast of Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck also includes Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jacob Tremblay, Annalise Basso, Matt Biedel, Rahul Kohli, Heather Langenkamp, Carl Lumbly, Matthew Lillard, and more. The film completed production in Alabama last fall, and while it doesn’t have a distributor lined up yet (as far as we know), we can keep fingers tightly crossed that the feature will get a theatrical and/or streaming release before the end of the year.
‘That Was A Moment I’ll Never Forget’: David Dastmalchian Recalls Getting Stephen King’s Reaction To Late Night With The Devil
About one year ago, Stephen King got an early look at the new film Late Night With The Devil (following its premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival), and it blew him away. Taking to his personal Twitter account post-screening, he declared that the movie is “absolutely brilliant” and he urged his followers to “watch it when you can.” That’s obviously high praise coming from a pop culture icon – and one person who is still trying to wrap his mind around the complement is Late Night With The Devil star David Dastmalchian.
A little more than 12 months after its premiere, Late Night With The Devil will be getting a theatrical release this week, and I had the pleasure of digging into the film earlier this month in an interview with Dastmalchian. As captured in the video above, I took time during our conversation to specifically ask about Stephen King’s Tweet, and he distinctly recalled exactly where he was and who he was with when he first saw the author’s shared thoughts:
That was a moment I’ll never forget. I was standing on set of the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards with Peaches Christ and the folks from Fangoria, and I get a text message from the producers of Late Night with the Devil and my creative partners, and they said, ‘Stephen King watched the movie, [producer] Roy [Lee] got him a link and look at his reaction.’ And I just stood there for a minute, just like trying to catch my breath. And I still haven’t really caught my breath.
It should go without saying that a stamp of approval from Stephen King means a hell of a lot for a tiny independent film like Late Night With The Devil, but the social media review also clearly meant a lot to David Dastmalchian personally. While the actor is probably best known for his impressive widespread presence in the DC multiverse, he is also a passionate horror fan who is presently ingratiating himself deeper in the world of King. Last year, he had a key supporting role in Rob Savage’s The Boogeyman, he is part of the ensemble in Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, and he is currently working on a secret King adaptation.
Dastmalchian added that he has long been passionate about Late Night With The Devil, but getting affirmation of its quality from a legend like Stephen King has made him even prouder of his collaboration with writer/director siblings Cameron and Colin Cairnes, saying.
The fact that he said what he said about our little movie had such a profound effect on how strongly I feel about… Internally, I always felt like this was such a great film, and I was very proud of it, but there’s something about someone like him giving you that blessing that just helps you bring those internal feelings to the outside. And now I just wanna tell everybody, ‘Please go see this movie’ ’cause I think you’re gonna really like it.
Set up as a unique kind of found footage film, Late Night With The Devil centers on the fictional talk show Night Owls With Jack Delroy and chronicles a notorious live broadcast from Halloween night in 1977. With ratings down and his show on the verge of cancelation, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) tries to take a big swing by hosting a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and the subject of her new book (Ingrid Torelli) as guests on the program – but the attempt at digging into their supernatural story ends up having horrifying consequences.
IFC Films has picked up the film for distribution, and Late Night With The Devil will be in theaters this Friday, March 22. It will also eventually be made available to watch with a Shudder subscription, but a streaming date has not yet been announced.
As Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher Turns 21, It Can Be Said Time Will Not Improve The 2003 Box Office Disaster
Castle Rock Entertainment is responsible for some of the best Stephen King movies of all time. Co-founded by Rob Reiner and taking its name from the setting of the coming-of-age classic Stand By Me (based on King’s novella “The Body”), the company has produced excellent adaptations including Misery, Needful Things, The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne and The Green Mile. In the 1990s, the shingle’s record with King projects was incredible… but it still remains hard to totally shake off the terribleness of Castle Rock’s last King project: the disastrous 2003 blockbuster based on the novel Dreamcatcher.
It was 21 years ago today that the film was released in theaters domestically, and its legacy is as one of the most notorious Stephen King adaptations. The alien invasion thriller was made with a substantial budget ($68 million, per The Numbers) and it sports an outstanding supporting cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant, but it was torn apart by critics upon its release and ultimately a box office flop that only managed to make $75.7 million worldwide.
To be fair, the whole endeavor started at a disadvantage because of one simple fact: Dreamcatcher is not a good book. It was a novel that Stephen King wrote in the aftermath of the June 1999 roadside accident that nearly killed him, and he did so while both in extreme pain and while “pretty stoned” taking doses of OxyContin. It has its charms, but it’s messy and rambling – and the adaptation doesn’t provide any fixes to its problems. It can be said that both the source material and the movie start well, featuring a group of old friends bonding on a trip together in the aftermath of a big personal scare, but once the extraterrestrials show up, the entire thing quickly goes downhill.
I can’t personally recommend it, but if you want to revisit Dreamcatcher to “celebrate” its anniversary, it isn’t presently streaming, but it is available for digital purchase from online retailers and is easy to find on Blu-ray for an affordable price.
Recommendation Of The Week: “1408”
Like Dreamcatcher, another Stephen King title celebrating an anniversary this week is Everything’s Eventual – the short story collection that first arrived in bookstores on March 19, 2002. With 14 fantastic tales, including the Roland Deschain-centric novella “The Little Sisters Of Eluria” and the locked in horror of “Autopsy Room Four,” it’s one of my favorite King omnibuses, but my favorite entry from it is the exceptionally unsettling “1408.”
When it comes to haunted hotels, Stephen King will forever be remembered for The Overlook in The Shining, but not to be undersold is the Dolphin Hotel and its most notorious room, as introduced in the short story. In “1408,” a supernatural debunker named Mike Enslin checks into the New York establishment with the hopes of writing about it for his latest book, but his well-engrained confidence that hauntings aren’t real proves to be dangerously wrong. Things seem off from the very first moment that he steps in the titular room, and it doesn’t take long before the protagonist finds himself trapped in a nightmare that will ultimately scar him forever.
That brings this week’s edition of The King Beat to a close, but be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend every Thursday for my latest column. Meanwhile, you can learn about all of the King adaptations presently in the works with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide and discover the full history of big and small screen adaptations via my Adapting Stephen King series.