The career of Mark Hamill is multi-faceted, from his time as legendary Jedi warrior Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise to his epic career in voice-over (the great highlight being his time as the Joker in various animated Batman movies and video games), but 2025 will be remembered for his link with the work of Stephen King. In a year of six total adaptations, Hamill stars in two of them: Mike Flanagan’s powerful drama The Life Of Chuck and Francis Lawrence’s horrifying thriller The Long Walk. It marks the second and third time that the actor has been in a King film… but if you don’t remember the first, it’s understandable. After all, it was over 30 years ago, and Hamill himself almost forgot.
For this week’s edition of The King Beat, my lead story is a fun conversation I recently had with Mark Hamill about his personal history with King during the Los Angeles press day for The Life Of Chuck, but that headline is joined by an in-depth look at the first trailer for MGM+’s The Institute – which will be debuting its first two episodes in just a few weeks. As always, there’s a lot to discuss, so without further ado, let’s dig in!
Mark Hamill Made His Stephen King Movie Debut In Sleepwalkers, But He Forgot About It Until Being Recently Reminded
On a cliffside property overlooking a beach in Bodega Bay, California, cops and spectators gather around a house with horrific exterior decoration: a bunch of cats have been slaughtered and hung up on strings. Jenkins, the lead officer on the scene, wearing a light blue uniform and sporting a thick mustache and slicked back blond hair, enters the house with his partner and finds another killed feline, but the place is otherwise abandoned. There is a low moaning coming from behind a closet door that turns out to be a trapped cat (a tried-and-true jump scare)… but with the animal they also discover the mummified corpse of a young girl, and they are mystified to find a rose tucked behind her ear.
This is the opening scene from director Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers, the first movie based on an original screenplay written by Stephen King, and the actor who plays Jenkins is none other than Mark Hamill – who is uncredited but easily recognized. Being the nerd that I am, I’ve always wondered about the origins of this cameo, so I naturally felt compelled to ask Hamill about it late last month during the Life Of Chuck press day.
Paired for interviews with co-star Benjamin Pajak, Hamill explained that there isn’t any big “story” behind his brief appearance in the Sleepwalkers prologue; he simply admired the talents of Mick Garris, and when he was asked to play a small role, he was happy to say yes:
I almost forgot about that. Because I knew Mick Garris, and he said, ‘Do you want to do a little cameo in this movie I’m doing?’ And I was wanting to support him. He’s a wonderful writer and director. And so I did it on a whim. I don’t know if I even got billing. In other words, I’m not one of the main actors.
Thirty-three years later, he is playing much more significant parts in a pair of new Stephen King movies – and the best thing about the roles is that they truly couldn’t be more different. In The Life Of Chuck, Mark Hamill plays the grandfather to the titular character, who raises him through his adolescence. He can be strict, and he drinks a bit too much, but he has tremendous love for his grandson and ultimately inspires in him a love of mathematics (which Charles parlays into a career as an accountant as an adult).
Later this year, Hamill will be featured prominently in The Long Walk, and he will be in full-on villain mode. Based on the first novel that Stephen King ever completed (and published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), the movie’s titular competition is essentially a death march that sees a collection of teenage boys try to survive long enough to be the last one standing and win the grand prize: a cash reward and the granting of a wish. Hamill plays The Major, the nameless, militaristic overseer of the contest who has no empathy for the contestants and solely demands the inspiration of pride for a dystopian America.
Obviously, Mark Hamill is a pop culture icon himself, but even icons have icons that they themselves look up to, and for Hamill, Stephen King is on that upper echelon. They clearly didn’t get to meet during the making of Sleepwalkers, but the actor finally had the pleasure last fall when The Life Of Chuck had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. They were seated next to each other for the screening, and Hamill gave me some insight into what was going on in his head during the experience:
I was only reminded of this recently. And then I got to meet [Stephen King]. I sat right next to him at TIFF. And I know I’m a good actor because I acted like a normal human being. Inside, I was like, ‘Whoa!’ But I didn’t do that. And I wanted to ask him a bunch of questions. ‘Why didn’t you like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining?’ Or, you know, all these questions. I don’t know him that well enough.
It’s a funny turning of the tables. Mark Hamill has spent the last half-century being approached by starry-eyed geeks who can’t believe that they are in the presence of Luke Skywalker, and Hamill got a full dose of that himself while seated inches away from one of the most influential minds of the modern era.
Since that screening, Hamill explained, the two men have maintained a connection via social media – and to counter a common phrase, familiarity has most definitely not done anything to breed contempt. In fact, it has only given the actor more opportunity to totally nerd out:
We follow each other now on social media. At one point he said… he said really nice things about this movie, and he said, ‘I was trying to post the trailer with some difficulty, but thanks to my pal Mark Hamill, he fixed it for me.’ Well, I didn’t want to, again, fanboy online, but I’m having that tweet printed out, framed, put on my wall.
For those who are curious, or perhaps want to have décor in their home matching what can be found in Mark Hamill’s house, you can find the aforementioned post on Bluesky.
Following its debut on the big screen in limited release at the end of last week, The Life Of Chuck is expanding into theaters nationwide this Friday, June 13. And for those of you looking forward to The Long Walk, it is currently scheduled to march into cinemas on September 12.
The Institute Trailer Reveals A Significant Change From The Stephen King Book, And It Concerns Ben Barnes’ Character
In 2025, when one Stephen King adaptation is released, the next one is right around the corner. Following the February arrival of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, Constant Readers can now see The Life of Chuck – and in just a few weeks from now, we’ll all be able to enjoy the debut of The Institute. Based on the King novel of the same name and featuring Benjamin Cavell (2020’s The Stand) and Jack Bender (Mr. Mercedes) as executive producers, the new show will be premiering on MGM+ on July 13, and to get audiences ready for the experience, the first trailer has arrived online.
Based on what we see in the preview, the adaptation looks like it is going to be very faithful to the source material. In the story, young prodigy Luke Ellis wakes up one morning in a room that looks exactly like his bedroom but is actually his living quarters in a government facility known simply as The Institute. He and a bunch of other children have been determined to have psychic abilities – being telepathic or telekinetic – and they have been abducted for the purpose of enhancing their powers. When Luke and the others begin to recognize the darker realities behind where they are, they begin to devise a way that they can escape.
What does strike me as different from the book in The Institute trailer, however, is the narrative presence of Tim Jamieson, who is being played by Ben Barnes. In the Stephen King novel, Tim is introduced at the very beginning as a police officer who leaves his job in Florida and winds up randomly settling in South Carolina… but then he doesn’t show up again until much later, as he lives a good distance from the location of the titular facility. Based on what we see in this trailer, however, his role is going to be significantly different, as he is going to be an outsider who begins his own investigation into the operations of The Institute while Luke and his friends try to get out.
How will the rest of the show line up with Stephen King’s original vision? I am exceptionally curious to find out, and you can be sure that I’ll be writing more about the show in this column as we get closer to its arrival.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but those of you needing more Stephen King in your life right now should most definitely do yourself a favor in the coming days and check out The Life Of Chuck on the big screen. It’s a brilliant and uplifting cinematic experience. Once you do that, you can proceed with waiting until next Thursday when my next column will arrive here on CinemaBlend.