Stephen King Has A Theory Why It Took So Long To Film The Long Walk

The entertainment market is so full of great and not-so-great Stephen King movies that live-action versions of the massively prolific horror maestro's work will no doubt soon count as a subgenre of their own. There are numerous guilty pleasures or otherwise underrated King movies among them, and everyone has their own favorites — including the writer himself, who has very clear opinions about which King adaptations are the best ones. 

Now, another live action version is about to join the ever-expanding Stephen King section in the annals of cinema. "The Long Walk" is one of his older works, which he wrapped up way back in 1967. Published under King's Richard Bachman pseudonym in 1979, the story imagines a dystopian country where an annual, borderline impossible walking contest among representatives of the nation's youth grants its winner a boon from an ominous militant figure, The Major (played in the adaptation by Mark Hamill), who supervises the contest and may or may not rule the U.S.

The story is finally getting a movie treatment, with Francis Lawrence ("Constantine," "I Am Legend," several "Hunger Games" films) at the helm. In an interview with Vanity Fair, King felt that it took so long for the story to make the transition to screen because all the previous attempts found the story too ruthless to adapt:

"I think maybe what held it back in those other adaptations is that merciless quality. Somebody putting down the money for it must've been, like, 'I don't know ... this is hard. This is a painful one.'"

The upcoming "The Long Walk" movie is indeed the latest in a very lengthy series of adaptation attempts, and obviously the sole successful one. The people who have looked into the possibility to make a movie include horror legend George Romero, successful King adaptation director Frank Darabont of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Mist" fame, and Norwegian terror expert André Øvredal ("Trollhunter," The Autopsy of Jane Doe," "The Last Voyage of the Demeter"). Even Lawrence himself expressed interest in giving it a go in the 2000s, only to find out that someone — he thinks it was Darabont — was already on the case at the time.

If King's theory on the previous planned adaptations falling apart is true, all of these filmmakers failed to crack the case when it comes to balancing the story's dystopian ruthlessness — the participants of the titular contest, after all, have to walk at a minimum speed of 4 mph regardless of the conditions, and are unceremoniously executed after three warnings if they fail until only one contestant is left. King fans will have to wait how Lawrence approaches the cruelty dilemma that King highlighted, but judging by the director's comments to Vanity Fair, he certainly understands that the movie needs to be a very different beast from the death competition films he's worked on before:

"In 'The Hunger Games,' everybody's competing in a very different kind of way. There are alliances and you are trying to kill one another. Here, you're not actually trying to kill one another. It's a very different dynamic, in terms of relationships."

"The Long Walk" strolls in theaters on September 12, 2025.