The true horror of The Long Walk is not how long it goes on, but how quickly it ends. The dystopian thriller hits theaters on Friday, September 12th, and ComicBook has an exclusive preview image below to get ready for this grueling story. The Long Walk is based on a novel by Stephen King, and studios have been trying to bring it to the screen for a long time now. It looks like they’ve finally cracked the code with a screenplay by JT Mollner directed by Francis Lawrence. The story is set in a near-future dystopia, with the US firmly under the control of a totalitarian regime. It depicts a simple yet bloody contest of endurance.
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The Long Walk is about an in-world competition held every year, in which 100 young men compete to see who can keep walking the longest down the highway. Competitors must keep up a constant pace of three miles per hour, and they get a warning if they fall below that speed for more than 30 seconds. If they get more than three warnings in an hour, they’re shot on the spot while the others continue walking past them. The winner will ultimately get any desire granted by the country’s despotic rulers, as the contest is meant to distract the people from their poor conditions and assure them of their leaders’ power.
In this adaptation, the face of that power is Mark Hamill, who plays “the Major.” He and a small force of soldiers follow the competitors and monitor to see when they fall below the minimum speed. The book’s main character is Ray Garraty, played here by Cooper Hoffman, though the movie seems to have more of an ensemble approach.
The Long Walk was published in 1979 under King’s pen name Richard Bachman, and according to King, it was the first complete novel he ever wrote. It was not ultimately the first to get published, but when it did hit shelves, it was successful. It shocked many readers and is still regarded as one of the author’s darkest works of all time. That’s saying a lot for King — just this year, two other incredibly grim King stories are coming to the big screen, The Monkey and The Running Man.
The earliest attempt to adapt The Long Walk was in 1988, when director George A. Romero was considered to head up the project. Sadly, that never came to pass, and several other versions of the movie fizzled out in development over the years that followed. Finally, Mollner, Lawrence, and Lionsgate got involved in 2023, bringing us the movie we have now.
The Long Walk hits theaters on Friday, September 12th. King’s novel is available now in print, digital, and audiobook formats.
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Image courtesy of Marvel Studios. -
Image Courtesy of Marvel Studios
