Stephen King Had One Condition For The Long Walk Movie

Stephen King has become such a prolific author over the past five decades that just about any one of his projects is considered ripe for adaptation. In this year alone, Osgood Perkins' "The Monkey" and Mike Flanagan's "The Life of Chuck" explored two very different sides of King's sensibilities, with Edgar Wright's "The Running Man" and the HBO series "It: Welcome to Derry" coming up over the next few months. In the middle of all these projects, however, is the long-awaited film adaptation of one of the horror maestro's earliest works with "The Long Walk," which couldn't come at a more fitting time.

Initially published under King's pseudonym Richard Bachman, the 1979 horror-thriller envisions a dystopian future where the only path to prosperity is paved by communal bloodshed. A large group of lottery-chosen adolescents go for a stroll that, once it starts, can only end one of two ways: riches or death. Everyone walks the long walk until there's only one left. There have been plenty of dystopian fiction stories about youths having to kill one another in order to move forward in life, but King's story depicts the deadly endurance challenge as one where the weapons are firmly in the hands of the totalitarian Major.

The development to bring one of King's bleakest tales to the big screen has ironically been a long one, with directors like George A. Romero and André Øvredal once in conversation to adapt it. It's director Francis Lawrence ("The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), along with screenwriter JT Mollner ("Strange Darling"), who have ultimately been tasked with translating the arduous psychological terror of "The Long Walk" for the big screen this fall.

Unless they're directly adapting their work, the author's input on changes made to their material is often superficial, at best. But when you're dealing with someone as prolific as King, it's natural for him to have a few suggestions. According to the film's producer Roy Lee, one of King's only concessions upon reading the script was to reduce the mandatory walking speed from the novel to something more manageable (via ScreenRant):

"He's like, 'Can you change it from 4 miles per hour to 3?' Because that's what was written in the book. He goes, 'There's no way that you could walk 4 miles an hour for that long.' That was the only initial note when he gave back. The ending was what it is, and he was like, 'I love it. But I think you need to reduce the speed.'"

When King first started writing "The Long Walk," it was at a point in history when young American boys were being involuntarily drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. They were essentially lambs for the slaughter, with the decision being left entirely out of their hands. It's natural to see how King would have been partially inspired to take that lottery system to such extremes as a walk or die contest where 99% of the participants already have a date with a bullet. When you're younger, the weight of the world can make you feel like you're moving at a pace beyond your control just to stay alive. It's no wonder he initially chose 4mph as the mandate.

I'm not much of a fitness tracking person, but even I know that 4mph would realistically end the competition a whole lot sooner. That's a relatively fast paced jaunt. Scaling it down to 3mph is not only much more feasible, but somehow even crueler. It presents a false sense of hope leading up to the inevitable first death. "The Long Walk" isn't so much about the competition itself, as it is the psychological torment it wages on boys like Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson). Giving them that initial leeway creates a sense of dread throughout the entire story because the cruelty is the point.

Given that the contemporary political and cultural landscape has shifted since King wrote the story, it stands to chance that Mollner and Lawrence would make changes wherever necessary. Translating King's work to the screen can be a hit-or-miss endeavor, but it appears these two have been successful. Early critical reactions for "The Long Walk" have been overwhelmingly positive across the board, with /Film's BJ Colangelo praising it as an emotionally obliterating all-time great Stephen King adaptation in her review.

"The Long Walk" is set to hit theaters on September 12, 2025.