His Netflix Deal Is Over. Can Mike Flanagan Save Theatrical Cinema Now?

Stacked up against the Oscar-buzzed galas for movies like Conclave, Babygirl, and Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, you wouldn’t think the Toronto International Film Festival world premiere of Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck would make too many waves. But a packed house full of fans of both Flanagan and the legendary Stephen King made for one of the most rousing screenings of this young festival.

Flanagan, whose breakout film Oculus was a TIFF premiere in 2013, has earned a reputation as Netflix’s horror-with-a-heart guy, after series like The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher. He’s also the culture’s current Stephen King whisperer, having made films out of long-awaited King titles like Gerald’s Game and the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep. On The Life of Chuck, he’s partnering with King again, adapting the novella of the same name from King’s 2020 collection If It Bleeds.

The raucous crowd was hyped from the very beginning, greeting Flanagan’s introductory remarks and practically leaping to their feet to applaud King, who was in attendance at the Princess of Wales Theater, seated next to Mark Hamill and right behind Tom Hiddleston, both stars of the film. It was clear that the years of making shows that blend inventive genre theatrics with earnest emotional crescendos has earned Flanagan the kind of fervor that puts you in conversation with Buffy and Battlestar Galactica.

As a feature film, The Life of Chuck can still feel very much like a Mike Flanagan TV series. The premise is grabby: a combination of natural disasters and crumbling infrastructure has folks thinking the end of the world has arrived, along with a series of unexplained advertisements thanking the heretofore unknown Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) for “39 great years.” There are a few big twists which alter the story in fundamental ways — characters turn out to have unexpected relevance to one another, and the plot gets advanced or resolved via a series of deeply emotional monologues. Flanagan fans (I’m more or less one, if not quite as demonstrative as the ones in attendance Friday evening) know what they’re getting at this point. It’s what makes him such a great fit for Stephen King’s output. This particular story plays very much like the work of an aging author who’s beginning to wonder what’s going to happen to all the people, places, and stories in his head when he’s no longer around to think about them.

As the film moves from its Twilight Zone-y beginning towards a more grounded finale, Flanagan’s audience stayed hooked: laughing loudly at every joke, no matter how mild; clapping at the arrival of the members of Flanagan’s ever-expanding troupe of recurring actors (Hamill, Karen Gillan, Samantha Sloya, Rahul Kohli, and Katie Siegel, plus a bunch of easter-egg vocal cameos). At the film’s midpoint, Hiddleston engages in an impromptu dance number with co-star Annalise Basso. The pair cha-cha, swing, and jazz dance their way around a barely disguised backlot set, drawing a crowd for the drumming busker providing them with their beat. While at this point in his career, it’s hardly a surprise that Hiddleston can put on a show, it’s still thrilling to watch this scene play out. When it ended, the already piping hot crowd erupted into applause.

Even if the movie never quite came together for me until its final few minutes, that crowd did more than enough to sell me on Flanagan as the real deal in terms of fan loyalty. My first thought was “get this movie into multiplexes where Flanagan’s enthusiasts can crowd into rooms and have a communal experience.” Why is Mike Flanagan not currently saving theatrical cinema? The answer to this, of course, is Netflix. Up until very recently, Flanagan was Netflix’s guy. They distributed his films Hush and Gerald’s Game. They aired all his TV series up through Usher last year. In doing so, Netflix cultivated an audience for Flanagan’s work that was very enthusiastic but also conditioned to watch all of it from the comfort of their couches. When Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep did release theatrically in 2019, it made a dispiriting $30 million at the domestic box office.

This wouldn’t be the first time news of a Netflix release dampened what had been a banger of a TIFF screening. In 2022, Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion had a TIFF premiere in the exact same Princess of Wales Theater and had the audience hooting and very much hollering at everything from Kate Hudson’s costumes to shocker cameos from Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury. And then the following November, Netflix gave the movie a cursory and under-promoted two-week theatrical run before tossing it onto the streaming service.

That said, Flanagan and Netflix are no longer in business together. In December of 2022, Amazon poached Flanagan and his Intrepid Pictures CEO Trevor Macy from Netflix. Yes, Amazon is another streamer, but one with a better track record of getting their films into cinemas. Maybe The Life of Chuck and further Mike Flanagan feature films can pack his legions of loud fans into theaters where they can howl their approval at Tim Hiddleston’s fleet footwork in a darkened room full of strangers (and sometimes Stephen King).