Chuck Russell, director of The Mask and The Blob, dies aged 74
Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenChuck Russell in 2023. He was 74.Russell directed several box office hits in his decades-long career including A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and The Mask. In 2002, his film The Scorpion King featured The Rock in his first leading role.The local fire department was called to Russell’s home on Wednesday afternoon with reports of an unconscious male, the director’s family said in a statement to TMZ.
- ▪Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenChuck Russell in 2023.
- ▪He was 74.Russell directed several box office hits in his decades-long career including A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and The Mask.
- ▪In 2002, his film The Scorpion King featured The Rock in his first leading role.The local fire department was called to Russell’s home on Wednesday afternoon with reports of an unconscious male, the director’s family said in a statement to
5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 18 hours. Coverage spans 3 points on the political spectrum — 2 lean left, 1 lean right, 1 right.
- ▪ RIP Chuck Russell, ‘The Mask’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 3’ Director — Gizmodo
- ▪ Chuck Russell, Director of ‘The Mask’ and Third ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ Movie, Dies at 74 — NYT > Top Stories
- ▪ Chuck Russell, director of ‘The Mask’ and ‘Scorpion King’ — dies unexpectedly at 74 — California Post
- ▪ Chuck Russell, Director Of Jim Carrey’s ‘The Mask,’ Dies At 74 — Forbes — Business
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/24/chuck-russell-director-dead |
| Publication time | Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:51:21 GMT |
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Chuck Russell in 2023. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenChuck Russell in 2023. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty ImagesMoviesChuck Russell, director of The Mask and The Blob, dies aged 74The film-maker, also behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, died on Wednesday in his San Diego homeOwen MyersFri 24 Jul 2026 16.51 EDTLast modified on Fri 24 Jul 2026 16.57 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleDirector Chuck Russell, who helped propel actors such as Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to the Hollywood A-list, was found dead in his San Diego, California, home on Wednesday. He was 74.Russell directed several box office hits in his decades-long career including A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob and The Mask.
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