If you’ve been wondering what’s happened in the year since movie stars and film crews descended on Mobile and Baldwin counties to shoot “The Life of Chuck,” we have some updates for you. The highly anticipated film based on a Stephen King story had its first official showing Friday, Sept. 6, at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Critics who saw the film are raving about the latest collaboration between horror icons King and director Mike Flanagan. Click here to read some of the reviews.
The all-star cast includes Tom Hiddleston (“Loki”), Mark Hamill (“Star Wars”), Karen Gillan (“Guardians of the Galaxy”), Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”), Matthew Lillard (“Scream”), Jacob Tremblay (“Dr. Sleep”), Mia Sara (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) and Kate Siegel (“Haunting of Hill House”). Heather Langenkamp, star of the original “Nightmare on Elm Street,” also appears, according to IMDb.
Stephen King, left, and Mike Flanagan attend the premiere of “The Life of Chuck” during the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, at Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
When and where will it be released?
If you search the internet for the official trailer and release dates for “The Life of Chuck,” you’d be disappointed. The only “trailers” are fan-made videos and there is no release date … yet. Although the film was written and helmed by Flanagan, the most buzzed about horror screenwriter and director of the past two decades, it does not have a distributor, according to The Wrap.
After years of collaborations with Netflix, Flanagan made this film as an independent project. The showing at the film festival is expected to draw a distributor, meaning that an announcement could be made in coming weeks. That’s when we’ll know if this film will have a theatrical release or if it will go directly to a streaming service.
Click here to see an “exclusive first look” in Vanity Fair.
Empty cars positioned in Dauphin Street set the scene for work on “The Life of Chuck” on Nov. 7, 2023.Lawrence Specker | [email protected]
Where was it filmed?
“The Life of Chuck,” a novella in the King collection “If It Bleeds,” is about the life of Charles Krantz (Hiddleston) shown in reverse chronological order. It does have supernatural elements but it is not a typical horror film. Deadline reports that “the genre project will draw tonally from ‘Stand By Me,’ ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Green Mile.’”
Keli Shirazi with the Mobile Film Office said “The Life of Chuck” was filmed in several cities in Alabama, including Mobile, Fairhope, Daphne, Bay Minette, Spanish Fort, and Foley.
The shoot brought business to the towns, she said. “They would bring roughly 119 crew members, four cast, and 20 background members to downtown Mobile to film and 41 of them would be Alabama local crew members,” Shirazi said. “The background actors would come from a variety of places on the Gulf Coast and be organized by the local Mobile -based company Barefoot Models and Talent.”
The crew also used a variety of local businesses as vendors, she said, including Jefe’s Paletas, Fairhope Soap Company, Moe’s Original BBQ, Kittrell’s Daydream Apiary, and Rouses.
Filming on the city’s well-known Dauphin Street required coordination from the Mobile Film Office, the city’s Communications Department, Traffic Engineering Department, Police Department, Mobile County Schools and Dauphin Street businesses, Shirazi said.
Tom Hiddleston attends the premiere of “The Life of Chuck” during the Toronto International Film Festival, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Toronto. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP) APAP
“For the film, they needed to flip the iconic one-way street to allow for a reverse flow of traffic as well as add a traffic light to convert the street,” she said.
In addition to Dauphin Street, a few of the places where filming took place in Alabama are:
- OWA (Oh-wah), an amusement and water park in Foley;
- Bay Minette Elementary School, 800 Blackburn Avenue;
- Fairhope Health Foods in the Eastern Shore Shopping Center;
- Old Daphne Methodist Cemetery, 1608 Old County Road. Adjacent to the 1847 church, also known as Methodist Episcopal Church, South;
- Volanta Park at 701 Volanta Avenue in Fairhope;
- Unspecified private residence in Fairhope;
- Unspecified neighborhood in Spanish Fort;
- Unspecified neighborhood in Daphne.
Mobile is a popular filming locale, particularly for horror films. It was used in Jordan Peele’s 2017 film “Get Out,” as well as three of Flanagan’s previous films, “Oculus,” “Before I Wake” and “Hush.” And way back in 1988, “Friday the 13th Part VII” was filmed in Mobile and at Byrnes Lake in Baldwin County.
