Neon Bought a Fantastic Oscar Contender With This Stephen King Adaptation — so Why Are They Burying It This Summer?

One of the biggest surprises of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival was the premiere of The Life of Chuck, an adaptation of the Stephen King novella of the same name, directed by Mike Flanagan. Although it screened at the festival alongside many leading award-season contenders, The Life of Chuck won the highly coveted People’s Choice Award, which has traditionally indicated significant Oscar buzz. The last TIFF People’s Choice Award winner not to receive a Best Picture nomination was 2011’s Where Do We Go Now?, but The Life of Chuck was unique because it did not go into the festival with a distributor. The Life of Chuck was purchased by Neon, a rising independent studio that has come to rival A24 with its credibility among cinephiles, and won Oscar gold with films like Anora and Parasite.

The Life of Chuck has an unusual story structure, as it is told in reverse chronological order within three separate acts. The first segment, “Thanks, Chuck,” focuses on a schoolteacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife (Karen Gillan) as they reunite in the midst of an apocalyptic event. The second and third segments, “Buskers Forever” and “I Contain Multitudes,” explore the life of the remarkable accountant Chuck Kranz when he is an adult (Tom Hiddleston) and a child (Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay). But with The Life of Chuck being released this summer and in limited theaters, it looks as though Neon has seemingly deflated its potential to be a major contender for Best Picture.

Neon Became Too Ambitious With Its Awards Slate

Neon’s last-minute acquisition of The Life of Chuck meant it didn’t fit within the studio’s award-season plan, which had already grown quite ambitious. Neon had been gunning for the top prizes ever since it acquired Sean Banker’s film Anora, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Although some of Neon’s other contenders, such as the apocalyptic musical The End and the science fiction docudrama 2073, were greeted with more mixed reviews, the studios also earned significant buzz for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which earned a nomination for Best International Feature. Fitting The Life of Chuck into an already packed slate may have been challenging, as Neon would have had to set up screenings, events, and other promotional events within the last few months before voting.

It’s not entirely unusual for a festival hit to debut early in the year and then earn buzz that leads it to a Best Picture nomination, as A24 pulled off this strategy quite successfully with Everything Everywhere All At Once and Past Lives. The difference is that these films hit theaters only shortly after they premiered at festivals, meaning that there was only a short gap when non-festival audiences were denied the chance to see them. The Life of Chuck had to wait nine months after its TIFF, and was then only available in a select few cities before it made its expansion. Given that many critics who attend TIFF are more interested in a film’s awards possibilities than its quality, it’s not surprising that The Life of Chuck got forgotten after an entire award season passed by.

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Neon likely does not consider The Life of Chuck to be a major awards contender, as the distributor picked up several exciting films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In addition to the family drama Sentimental Value, which it had acquired a year prior, Neon bought the Palme d’Or winner A Simple Accident, the Jury Prize winner Sirât, and the Brazilian historical drama The Secret Agent, which won Wagner Moura the prize for Best Actor. Considering that NEON also has other contenders like Alpha and Arco that may potentially be in play within other categories, The Life of Chuck’s buzz will have to be organic.

‘The Life of Chuck’ May Have Lost Its Awards Opportunity

The Life of Chuck has lost its momentum based on the fact that it has stalled at the box office, and did not receive a significant expansion when it moved into wider release. While not every “early Oscar contender” needs to be a massive blockbuster in the vein of Barbie or Oppenheimer, films like Boyhood or Hell or High Water earned Best Picture nominations after doing surprisingly well at the summer box office. While The Life of Chuck has held on to its positive score, enthusiasm for the film has been slightly more moderate, as general critics have been slightly colder on the film compared to the excitable Toronto audiences. It’s also been overshadowed by other films from the first half of the year that could find themselves in the awards race, such as Sinners and F1.

It’s unfortunate that The Life of Chuck missed its window, as there is a proud history of King adaptations being recognized by the Oscars; The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile were both Best Picture nominees, Kathy Bates won Best Actress for her performance in Misery, and films like Stand by Me and Carrie also received major nominations. Considering that King adaptations are very hot right now, as this year also saw the release of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey and the impending adaptations of The Longest Walk and The Running Man, there may have been a groundswell of support among his fans.

The Life of Chuck could have been a contender had it debuted last year, as it was possible that it could have made a Best Picture lineup over a more divisive film like Nickel Boys, which only received a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. Flanagan’s screenplay has been praised for being a creative adaptation of a challenging piece of source material, and there was certainly room to launch a Best Supporting Actor campaign for Mark Hamill, as he is a celebrated actor who has never earned significant awards love. The Life of Chuck is one of the year’s best films, but that doesn’t mean that the Oscars will see it the same way.

The Life of Chuck is now playing in theaters.