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Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation, The Life of Chuck, has won the People’s Choice award at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.
The science fiction drama, starring Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, follows “three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz”.
In a statement, Flanagan thanked TIFF for the award, saying: “I’m absolutely overwhelmed. We’re so grateful that The Life of Chuck connected with audiences in such a powerful way, but never expected this.”
Flanagan has adapted King’s work in the past, including Doctor Sleep andGerald’s Game.
He is known for creating supernatural horror anthology series The Haunting on Netflix, which includes The Haunting of Hill House in 2018 and The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020.
King congratulated the “dark horse” winner in a post on X, writing: “LIFE OF CHUCK was the dark horse winner of the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award. I am so blissed out for Mike Flanagan and his talented troupe of actors.”
The Life of Chuck entered the festival without a distributor and, therefore, has no set release date yet.
The TIFF People’s Choice Award is voted on by audience members and is considered an indicator for a top contender at the forthcoming awards season.
With no release date, The Life of Chuck might be the first People’s Choice awards winner that doesn’t feature in the awards season, though the win might be the catalyst it needs to find a distributor.
Past People’s Choice award winners that went on to win the Best Picture Oscar are Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, American Beauty, and Chariots of Fire. Winners of the award that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar include American Fiction, JoJo Rabbit, La La Land, The Imitation Game, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, Life Is Beautiful, Places in the Heart, and The Big Chill.
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The first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award was the Jacques Audiard-directed crime musical comedy Emilia Pérez, which won its lead Karla Sofía Gascón the best actress award at the Cannes, which she shared with fellow stars Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldaña.
The second runner-up was Sean Baker’s comedy drama Anora, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year.
Other notable winners at TIFF include the Demi Moore-starrer The Substance, which topped the Midnight Madness section, and the Mike Downie-directed The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal which won best documentary.
