20 Recent Movies That Made ONE Huge Mistake

This time last year, there was genuine buzz that Mike Flanagan's new Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck would be a serious Oscar player, given that the film won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival - an ultra-reliable indicator that a film will get a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

But rather than capitalise on that buzz, distributor Neon made the ill-advised decision to push The Life of Chuck's theatrical release to the summer of 2025, by which point the lustre of its TIFF win had largely worn off.

And so, combined with a poor marketing campaign which failed to sell the fantasy-drama to audiences, it wasn't much of a surprise that Flanagan's film ended up grossing just $16.2 million worldwide, basically ensuring it won't get any real Oscar traction this awards season.

This will make The Life of Chuck the first film since 2011's Where Do We Go Now? to win TIFF's People's Choice Award and not translate that into a Best Picture nomination.

But if Neon had hit the ground running and pushed for a late 2024 release during peak buzz, things could've been very different.