TIFF audience rewards Mike Flanagan, Stephen King, Tom Hiddleston…

The Life of Chuck received the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend. An award that bodes well for its future…

Already acclaimed for his adaptation of Doctor Sleepthe continuation of Shiningat the cinema, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House…) will be back soon with The Life of Chuckanother adaptation of Stephen King. Unveiled at the Toronto festival last week, it has just won the People's Choice Award.

It may seem like a small thing to win a trophy at a festival that doesn't really have a track record, but the fact is that TIFF attendees are rarely wrong. Winning this particular award in Toronto often announces a bright future to the winnerswhich then traditionally enter the Oscar race. Among the last twelve TIFF winners – among them La La Land, Three Billboards Or The Fabelmans- Three have outright won the Academy's major statuette: Nomadland, Green Book And 12 Years a Slave.

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Mike Flanagan is obviously delighted with this first award, which shows that he has not made a mistake in adapting this short work by the author of Carrie. From the short stories published in 2020 in the collection If It Bleeds, The Life of Chuck approaches the register of Stand by Me, The Escapeess or even The green linetelling the simple joys of a man's life, while the world collapses around him.

“In a disaster movie, people are running to their doom and fleeing tidal waves, and this story shows people sitting quietly, holding hands, and looking at the stars.explained its director to define its concept. He surrounded himself for this film with Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Matthew Lillard (Scream), as well as Karen Gillian, Carl Lumbly and Mark Hamill, whom he has already directed, respectively in The Mirror, Doctor Sleep And The Fall of the House of Usher.

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Congratulated by Stephen King himself on social media, shortly after a message from Hamill, who was overjoyed to see the film in preview alongside the writer, Flanagan wrote:

“I am overjoyed. And so grateful to Steve for trusting us to bring his beautiful story to the screen.”

TIFF also shared video interviews with Mike Flanagan reacting to the win, and explaining how the project, funded by FilmNation Entertainment, was different from his previous work for Netflix or Warner Bros.:

“It was like coming home, not having all that pressure from the studios anymore… Sure, it was challenging, but it was different. The film awakened something in me that I love about making an independent film, in a DIY way. I loved making that film.”

The Life of Chuck does not yet have a French release date. Note thatEmilia Perez And Anoradirected by Jacques Audiard and Sean Baker, and already rewarded at the last Cannes festival, were also praised by the TIFF public: if they received slightly fewer votes than The Life of Chuckthey came 2nd and 3rd respectively in the People's Choice Award.

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