The surviving gang from the classic 1986 movie Stand by Me are going on tour for the movie's 40th anniversary. Stand by Me: The Film and Its Stars 40 Years Later has announced new dates and locations for the spring of 2026, with Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and Wil Wheaton appearing live in person for a reunion and conversation about the making of the Rob Reiner film.
When he filmed Stand by Me, the 1986 Rob Reiner adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Body, River Phoenix was only 14. In 1990, the year my middle-school friends and I watched a rented VHS copy of that movie at every sleepover, we were 13. If you'd asked us at the time, we wouldn't have been able to explain why Phoenix's character, Chris Chambers-the brave, wrong-side-of-the-tracks leader of the boy gang on a quest to see a dead body-did it for us.