Why Wil Wheaton Is ‘Grateful’ for “Stand by Me”’s Anniversary Tour with Jerry O’Connell and Corey Feldman After Director Rob Reiner’s Death (Exclusive)

“Jerry and Corey and I felt like we just kind of picked up right where we left off,” Wheaton tells PEOPLE

NEED TO KNOW

• Wil Wheaton speaks to PEOPLE at the 2026 BAFTA Student Awards, which saw the British Academy of Film and Television Arts partnering with e.l.f. Cosmetics
• The actor has joined Stand by Me costars Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell on a nationwide tour pegged to the 40th anniversary of the Rob Reiner-directed classic
• “We went from being so excited and so on top of the world to that unbelievable loss,” Wheaton says of Reiner’s death in December 2025

Wil Wheaton is still standing by Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell after Rob Reiner‘s death.

Reuniting last fall on a “really wonderful” nationwide tour tied to the 40th anniversary of the coming-of-age classic Stand by Me, Wheaton tells PEOPLE that the cast didn’t miss a beat.

“Jerry and Corey and I felt like we just kind of picked up right where we left off,” Wheaton says.

Speaking with PEOPLE at the 2026 BAFTA Student Awards with e.l.f. Cosmetics on Friday, July 17, Wheaton, 53, recalls the roller coaster of learning of Reiner’s death. The actor-filmmaker and his wife Michele were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Dec. 14. Their son Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with their tragic deaths.

“We went from being so excited and so on top of the world to that unbelievable loss, right before all of us were just convinced that we’d be seeing him this year, that we would be getting together to celebrate the movie,” Wheaton explains.

“I’m just so grateful that we had done those shows together right before so that we had a place to land, the three of us, with the only other two people in the world who were really going to be able to understand what the rest of us were experiencing.”

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Wheaton was on hand at the 2026 BAFTA Student Awards to celebrate 15 finalist projects selected from more than 600 submissions worldwide, with winners announced in Animation, Documentary, Live Action, Games, and Immersive categories.

The Elle Osili Wood-hosted event brings together emerging filmmaking talent with members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and jury members including Joel Kim Booster, Heather Callow and Laura Karpman. 

“It’s wonderful that young filmmakers are seeing [Stand by Me] and dedicating themselves to a similar kind of storytelling and not feeling like they need to immediately lean into giant Hollywood blockbusters,” says Wheaton. The 1986 comedy-drama, costarring Kiefer Sutherland and the late River Phoenix, was adapted by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans from Stephen King‘s 1982 novella The Body.

“Every now and then when I get an opportunity to speak to teenagers or college students, and they talk about Stand by Me, what comes up over and over and over again is it’s a little movie,” Wheaton continues. “It’s about real emotion. It’s about relationships. It’s about children desperately trying to connect to their parents who could not care less about them. These are things that a lot of artists experience.”

The “greatest experience” of the Stand by Me 40th anniversary tour with Feldman and O’Connell, he adds, “is seeing teenagers in the audience with their parents or their grandparents who saw it when it came out, or to see people in their 30s who grew up watching it on DVD who are seeing it in a theater for the first time. That’s really fun.”

The Stand by Me tour resumes this November with stops in Dayton, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky.

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