The Life of Chuck: Tom Hiddleston compares Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King movie to The Shawshank Redemption

Mike Flanagan – who has previously been at the helm of the Stephen King adaptations Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep (and is also developing a series adaptation of The Dark Tower for Amazon Studios) – recently went into production on another King adaptation, The Life of Chuck… and now, during an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, star Tom Hiddleston (Loki) has confirmed that his work on the film has been completed. While talking about the film, Hiddleston also compared it to one of the most popular King adaptations, The Shawshank Redemption!

Based on the short story from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds, The Life of Chuck consists of three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house.

Hiddleston is playing Chuck, with Mark Hamill (Star Wars) playing a character named Albie. They are joined in the cast by Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy), Jacob Tremblay (The Predator), Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Benjamin Pajak (Past My Bedtime), Trinity Jo-Li Bliss (Avatar: The Way of Water), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World), Antonio Raul Corbo (Into the Dark: Pilgrim), Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows), David Dastmalchian (The Boogeyman), Kate Siegel (Hush), Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep), Annalise Basso (Ouija: Origin of Evil), Samantha Sloyan (The Midnight Club), Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass), Matt Biedel (Aliens Abducted My Parents), Sauriyan Sapkota (The Fall of the House of Usher), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (The Haunting of Hill House), Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica), Violet McGraw (M3GAN), Molly C. Quinn (Castle), and Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street).

We had heard before that the adaptation is expected to be similar in tone to the likes of Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redeption, and The Green Mile. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hiddleston said (with thanks to Screen Rant for the transcription), “As I’m speaking to you now, I’ve wrapped my days on The Life of Chuck. And I had the most wonderful time with Mike Flanagan and his team and his company. There’s a real company of actors that he works with all the time, but also some new performers, and on this Stephen King. He is a kind of primary interpreter of Stephen King, I think. And what I love about this material and the short stories out there, was it seemed to be resonant of the Stephen King who wrote The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a warmth and a kind of spirit that’s really on the side of life in the story, that I really connected to when I read it. It was just the most extraordinary script. I connected to it immediately. And then, and it’s Mike Flanagan who’s written the screenplay. So when we met, I just said this is amazing. Can I come and do it? Can I please come and do it? And yeah, and we had a great time.“

As Hiddleston mentioned, Flanagan wrote the screenplay. He is also producing the film through his company Intrepid Pictures. A few years ago, we heard that Darren Aronofsky would be producing The Life of Chuck through his company Protozoa, but he doesn’t appear to be involved with the project at this point.

Are you interested in The Life of Chuck? What do you think of it being compared to The Shawshank Redemption? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.