Now, he’s also going to be tackling a fresh adaptation of ‘The Mist.’
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Deadline brings word that Warner Bros. has made a deal for Flanagan to write and direct a new take on King’s 1980 novella, which originally appeared in the collection ‘Skeleton Crew.’
(L to R): Marcia Gay Harden, William Sadler, Toby Jones and Jeffrey DeMunn in ‘The Mist’ (2007). Photo: Dimension Films.
King’s story concerns what happens when a small town in Maine is consumed by a thick mysterious fog from which creatures emerge to attack the townsfolk.
A group of survivors hole up in a local grocery store. As often happens with King’s fiction, anarchy and societal reordering brings out the best in some, and the absolute worst in others, sparking mob mentality and empowering unhinged extremists who become as dangerous as the horrors outside.
Spoiler alert: things get dark. Very dark.
When will ‘The Mist’ be on screens?
There is no date for the new version as of yet, but if you want to check it out in movie form, Frank Darabont brought a film of the story to screens back in 2007.
Thomas Jane in ‘The Mist’ (2007). Photo: Dimension Films.
Horror movies have two speeds: Slasher and terrifyingly intense. At the risk of sleeping with the lights on for the next forever, we’re looking at the latter.
With Halloween fast approaching, Moviefone is counting down the most terrifying horror movies that were released between 2015 and now.
Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) and the terrifying vampire (Bill Skarsgård) infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
An American nun (Sydney Sweeney) embarks on a new journey when she joins a remote convent in the Italian countryside. However, her warm welcome quickly turns into a living nightmare when she discovers her new home harbours a sinister secret and unspeakable horrors.
When an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.
In town for a job interview, a young woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man (Bill Skarsgård) is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway.
A young couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.
Still scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) faces the ghosts of the past when he meets Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a courageous teen who desperately needs his help — and who possesses a powerful extrasensory ability called the “shine”.
After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain.
When twin brothers (Theo James) find a mysterious wind-up monkey, a series of outrageous deaths tear their family apart. Twenty-five years later, the monkey begins a new killing spree forcing the estranged brothers to confront the cursed toy.
When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.
In pursuit of a serial killer (Nicolas Cage), an FBI agent (Maika Monroe) uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
A fading celebrity (Demi Moore) decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself (Margaret Qualley).
Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
Two young missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
In a small town in Maine, seven children known as The Losers Club come face to face with life problems, bullies and a monster that takes the shape of a clown called Pennywise.
Following the death of the Leigh family matriarch, Annie (Toni Collette) and her children uncover disturbing secrets about their heritage. Their daily lives are not only impacted, but they also become entangled in a chilling fate from which they cannot escape, driving them to the brink of madness.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Tom Hiddleston about his work on ‘The Life of Chuck’, his first reaction to the screenplay by Mike Flanagan and the way he adapted Stephen King’s source material, and the challenges of preparing for and shooting the massive dance sequence.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan.
Tom Hiddleston stars in ‘The Life of Chuck’. Photo: Neon.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and the way Mike Flanagan was able to adapt Stephen King’s source material?
Tom Hiddleston: I remember it so clearly. It was Easter of 2023 and I read it in a single sitting. In the UK, the Monday after Easter is a public holiday, so it’s a day off. Bank Holiday Monday, we call it. I was so moved and inspired by what I read because initially I felt like, I was so intrigued by the first act. It felt like a film about the end of the world, but with such tenderness and such truthfulness about the uncertainty of that experience through Marty and Felicia, the characters played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan. Also, because I had the letter from Mike, I knew he’d asked me to play Chuck and just like everybody else, I was like, well, who’s Chuck? Who is this guy? Then when it was revealed, what was happening, in terms of the narrative, and I don’t want to spoil too much. But when the stars started to be extinguished and I understood what that meant for Chuck’s life and how it turned into a meditation on joy and an exploration of the magic of the ordinary life of every human being, that none of us are one thing. We all contain multitudes, which is to say that inside the soul of every ordinary human being is an internal world of infinite possibility. That infinite possibility can create a universe in every life, a universe of connections, of people, of experiences, of memories. That when that life comes to an end, so does that universe. It sums up the way I think about life and that sometimes the small moments aren’t small at all, and they end up, in your mind becoming the big moments, in your memory. Really, in the last hours of our lives, all we will carry in our hearts and our minds are the people we loved, the memories we shared with them, the connections we made. That is all that matters. I was so struck by it and so moved by it and so inspired by how Mike had put the film together, and I just immediately wanted to get on the phone with him and say, please, can I do this with you? It was a very special experience and a film that’s very close to my heart.
(L to R) Annalise Basso and Tom Hiddleston in ‘The Life of Chuck’. Photo: Neon.
MF: Finally, can you talk about rehearsing for the dance sequence and how many times did you have to shoot it to get it right?
TH: Well, I had, in my own life, less formal dance training than Charles Krantz had. I’ve always loved dancing, but I’ve never danced like this. I had about five weeks and the brilliant, extraordinary Mandy Moore, our choreographer and her assistant, Stephanie Powell, who was working with me in London, we worked every day, and we did salsa, swing, Charleston, Bossa Nova, polka, samba, and jazz. I mean (we did) every dance under the sun, you name it. We put the thing together. It was so thrilling to do it, but by the time we got to set, I think the first four days of principal photography on the entire picture, we shot the sequence in the mall when Chuck starts dancing to the beat of those drums. It was me and Taylor Gordon on the drums and Annalise Basso. We shot it consistently across the same stretch of time so that the light matched, essentially. So, it was between about 11am and 3pm across four days. We just did it from every angle. Every camera was wide, it was high, it was dancing with us, it was Steadicam, and it was on a crane. But I will say, the very last take we did, because we’d do the whole sequence from start to finish every time, was on the fourth day, the Thursday. We went back to a setup we’d done before. It was almost an homage to the great musicals, which contained the entire thing. It wasn’t close-up; it wasn’t a mid-shot. It was both Annalise and me and the drum kit and Taylor and the crowd. We played it from start to finish. It was a moment I will never forget. It was a kind of magical take, and a lot of the sequence is from that take. Mike knew it. I knew it. Annalise knew it. The crowd knew it. Mandy knew it. It was like a perfect thing. That’s where we stopped.
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What is the plot of ‘The Life of Chuck’?
Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) experiences the wonder of love, the heartbreak of loss, and the multitudes contained in all of us.
Mike Flanagan has built himself quite the reputation for adapting the works of Stephen King to screens and making some great TV series in the horror/thriller realm. So it seems natural that for the first planned series under his recent deal with Amazon, would combine the two.
King’s 1974 novel put the young author on the map, and also bolstered his worth as a writer whose genre storytelling was most translatable to the big screen.
In 1976, Brian De Palma was the first director to adapt King’s coming of age story of a young, sheltered girl (Sissy Spacek) with a domineering mother whose bullying caused unimaginable blood-soaked consequences at her school’s prom due to her hyperkinetic powers.
He currently has ‘The Life of Chuck,’ starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill, adapted from King’s 2020 novella, receiving praise at festival runs and is being set for a 2025 release.
Mike Flanagan is in talks to make ‘The Exorcist: Deceiver’.
David Gordon Green kicked off the new trilogy with ‘The Exorcist: Believer’.
Universal is hoping for a fresh creative voice after ‘Believer’ underperformed.
It was seemingly going so well for Universal and Blumhouse on their collaboration for revivals of classic horror properties. Off the back of a mostly successful three-film run via ‘Halloween’, the studio dived into another, splashing $400 million for the rights to ‘The Exorcist’ with the plan for ‘Halloween’ trilogy filmmaker David Gordon Green to crank out three more movies, and wait for the cash to come rolling in.
Except… It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Green was certainly enthusiastic about his next stab at a big horror property, but then ‘The Exorcist: Believer’, which featured a new story of possession, but also boasted connective tissue via the 1973 movie’s star Ellen Burstyn reprising her role of Chris MacNeil, stumbled.
That movie received fairly scathing reviews, was largely snubbed by audiences, and took in just $136 million worldwide. The potential trilogy’s forward movement grinding to a halt, Green announced he was going off to work on other movies (and the fourth season of HBO series ‘The Righteous Gemstones’), and Blumhouse/Universal found themselves hanging the “Director Wanted” sign.
(from left) Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr.) in ‘The Exorcist: Believer,’ directed by David Gordon Green.
‘The Exorcist: Believer’ followed what happened when two girls disappear into the woods and return three days later with no memory of what happened to them. The father of one girl seeks out Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil, who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter fifty years ago.
Jennifer Nettles in ‘The Exorcist: Believer’. Photo: Universal Pictures.
Given that (spoiler alert for ‘Believer’!) the first movie ended with one of the girls dragged to Hell by a demon when the father of the other made a tragic choice, there’s plenty of scope for her parents to go to terrible lengths to try and get her back.
Green had said he’d mapped out an idea for the movies going forward, but with Flanagan now likely to make the next one (and reportedly being given creative freedom), there could well be a pivot into more of an anthology idea. But we’ll have to wait and see.
When will ‘The Exorcist: Deceiver’ be in theaters?
While the movie, back when Green was still aboard, was dated for April 18th, 2025, the change in filmmaker has led to a delay. Universal has yet to confirm a new date, obviously waiting to see whether Flanagan takes the job.
(Left) Mark Hamill in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi.’ (Right) Tom Hiddleston in ‘The Night Manager.’
In the last decade or so, Mike Flanagan has established himself as one of the preeminent adaptation specialists when it comes to the work of Stephen King, and, especially on the small screen, has established his own identity as a master of horror with shows such as ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and ‘Midnight Mass’.
He’s back in King territory for a new movie, ‘The Life of Chuck’ and has recruited Mark Hamill (who surely needs little introduction) and Marvel/Shakespeare veteran Tom Hiddleston to star.
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Mike Flanagan and Stephen King
In just a couple of movies –– following some original work of his own –– Flanagan established his King credentials. There was Netflix’s ‘Gerald’s Game’, which starred Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood in the story of a married couple attempted to spice up their relationship at a remote lake house when the husband unexpectedly dies while his wife his handcuffed to the bed. And he followed that with ‘Doctor Sleep’, his adaptation of King’s ‘The Shining’ sequel.
Author Stephen King. Photo: Stephen King/Facebook.
As opposed to his more straightforward horror adaptations, ‘Chuck’ will see Flanagan tackling something a little different from King’s canon, taking on the short story first published as part of the 2020 collection ‘If It Bleeds’ (which also featured ‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’, adapted for Netflix by John Lee Hancock last year).
The short story is split into three sections:
The story is split into three acts offered in reverse chronological order.
In Act 1: ‘I Contain Multitudes’, Chuck is orphaned and is brought up by his paternal grandparents, where his love of dancing develops. His grandparents always keep their house’s cupola locked, but eventually Chuck unlocks the room and sees himself dying of a brain tumor at the age of 39.
In Act 2: ‘Buskers’, Chuck sees a drummer busking and starts dancing. A young girl joins him, dancing with Chuck as a crowd surrounds them. After dancing, Chuck suffers a bad headache and walks away dejected.
In Act 3: ‘Thanks, Chuck’, Marty drives home and sees a billboard showing an accountant sitting at a desk, underneath it says ‘39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck’ as the world appears to be slowly crumbling. That evening as Marty visits his ex-wife Felicia, he notices Chuck’s image appearing everywhere. In a hospital, Chuck is dying surrounded by his family. Marty and Felicia see the stars disappearing, then blackness.
Hiddleston’s playing one version of Chuck, while Hamill will be a character named Albie.
One of the most anticipated horror movies of the fall, “Doctor Sleep” is an adaptation of the best-selling Stephen King novel that takes place decades after the events of King’s own “The Shining.” Just how indebted the cinematic adaptation would be to Stanley Kubrick’s beloved film has remained a tantalizing question, one that the new trailer (currently attached to “It Chapter Two) has answered definitively.
The new film follows a grown-up Dan Torrance (now played by Ewan McGregor) who works in hospice care and allows his patients to cross over peacefully, thanks to his extraordinary gifts. He soon confronts the demons of his past when a group of energy vampires (led by Rebecca Ferguson) start targeting those with “the shining,” leading to an epic confrontation at the site of the former Overlook Hotel.
What makes this movie adaptation so fascinating is that, thanks to the original “Shining” book and movie’s very different endings, what was a more metaphysical showdown in an empty site (thanks to the hotel exploding in the novel) has become a more concrete return to the past (since the hotel still stands in the cinematic version). Writer-director Mike Flanagan, who already has one stone cold classic Stephen King adaptation under his belt (Netflix’s terrific “Gerald’s Game”), looks to be recreating the Kubrick movie with unwavering fidelity, adding an extra dimension to an already fascinating project.
Director Mike Flanagan (“The Haunting of Hill House”) confirmed the film’s rating on Twitter, which has been given for “disturbing and violent” content, among other things:
“Doctor Sleep” takes place 40 years after the events of the first film. Ewan McGregor stars as Danny Torrance, who is still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook.
Dan has fought to find some semblance of peace, but that is shattered when he encounters Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a teen who shares his supernatural gift of “shine.” They team up to battle the merciless Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her followers, who feed off shine in their quest for immortality.
Stephen King notoriously did not like Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie because it veered from his novel. McGregor has said “Doctor Sleep” will be “faithful to his novel. But for one thing. And I’m not going to give anything away.”
Flanagan has previously said he won’t totally ignore Kubrick’s film,t hough. “I think you do have to acknowledge it,” he noted. “There is no version of the world where I am trying not to acknowledge one of the greatest films ever made.”
The first trailer for “Doctor Sleep,” the highly anticipated sequel to 1980’s “The Shining,” is here to terrify us all.
“Doctor Sleep” takes place 40 years after the events of the first film. Ewan McGregor stars as Danny Torrance, who is still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook.
Dan has fought to find some semblance of peace, but that is shattered when he encounters Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a teen who shares his supernatural gift of “shine.” They team up to battle the merciless Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her followers, who feed off shine in their quest for immortality.
Stephen King notoriously did not like Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie because it veered from his novel. McGregor has said “Doctor Sleep” will be “faithful to his novel. But for one thing. And I’m not going to give anything away.”
The sequel comes from director Mike Flanagan (“The Haunting of Hill House”), who has previously said that he won’t ignore Kubrick’s movie. ““I think you do have to acknowledge it,” he noted. “There is no version of the world where I am trying not to acknowledge one of the greatest films ever made.”
The film centers on a grown-up Danny Torrance (McGregor), who we previously saw in “The Shining” as the boy (Danny Lloyd) whose father (Jack Nicholson) became homicidal. He’ll meet a young girl who, like him, has psychic abilities, which they’ll use to try to take down a dangerous cult. Both “The Shining” and “Doctor Sleep” are based on Stephen King novels; Stanley Kubrick directed the original, and Mike Flanagan is directing the sequel.
Momoh’s past work includes starring as Seth Butler in Netflix’s crime drama series “Seven Seconds.” He was also recently cast in an upcoming film about Harriet Tubman and will reportedly play Tubman’s husband.
