20 Recent Movies Ruined For INSANE Reasons
10. Shelving It For 9 Months - The Life of Chuck
Mike Flanagan's fantasy drama The Life of Chuck, adapted from Stephen King's 2020 novella of the same name, was riding high following its premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
Flanagan's film won the festival's coveted People's Choice Award, which has historically been a strong indicator that a film will be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
But rather than capitalise on this buzz and ready the film for a splashy theatrical rollout at the end of 2024, distributor Neon decided to hold onto the movie and release it in June 2025.
In addition to being a decidedly less awards-friendly release window, the film's early buzz had largely fizzled by this point, ensuring it ultimately failed to garner any serious awards traction, making it the first People's Choice Award winner since 2011's Where Do We Go Now? to not secure a Best Picture nod.
Now, would The Life of Chuck have been an awards juggernaut if Neon released it in late 2024? No, but it would've had a good shot at scoring nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and maybe even Best Supporting Actor for Mark Hamill, whose performance was widely acclaimed as his career-best.
None of this undermines the quality of the film of course, but The Life of Chuck absolutely deserved a more committed awards push from a distributor that really should've known better.