Charlie St. Cloud
2010 film by Burr Steers

Charlie St. Cloud is a 2010 American supernatural drama film based on Ben Sherwood's novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, published in 2004 by Bantam Books. The film is directed by Burr Steers and stars Zac Efron, Amanda Crew, Donal Logue, Charlie Tahan, Ray Liotta and Kim Basinger. The story is about Charlie St. Cloud's choice between keeping a promise he made to his younger brother, who died in a car accident, or going after the girl he loves. In some markets the film used the complete title of the book.
After winning the rights to adapt the book into film, Universal Pictures had James Schamus and Lewis Colick write drafts for the script, with Craig Pearce writing the final script, and director Steers helping to polish it for completion. The film's production (by Relativity Media and Marc Platt Productions) began in upstate New York and British Columbia. Filming lasted from July to late October 2009, with much of it occurring in upstate New York's forest and Gibsons' coastal pier.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charlie St. Cloud” is 2010 film by Burr Steers. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charlie, Cloud and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q581201. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2004 and 2009.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charlie St. Cloud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.