The premise of the first novel Stephen King wrote—published years later under his Richard Bachman pseudonym—makes it seem like it could, if you squint, be the direct ancestor of Speed. Except rather than a bus that’s gotta stay over 50 miles per hour, the characters in The Long Walk must keep walking at a minimum pace of 4 miles per hour. There are other rules, but this is the basic one. Stop walking and die. Be the last man standing walking and win.
For the upcoming movie adaptation, directed by Francis Lawrence, the game has been upped: The men (all men) have to stay under 3 mph. That’s a twenty-minute mile: generally doable for a person in good walking health, but perhaps not so much when you’ve been doing it for days on end.
The synopsis is not particularly informative and in fact a bit confusingly written:
From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen King’s first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mockingjay – Pts. 1 & 2 , and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), comes The Long Walk, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?
For what, Lionsgate? How far would you go for what? Without context this question is not all that haunting.
Surprisingly, given the sheer number of King adaptations in the world already, this is the first movie adaptation of the story. The trailer is very very very serious. And grim. It stars Mark Hamill as the Major, who is the boss of the walk, and a whole bunch of young men, presumably as those walking or shooting the walkers: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Josh Hamilton. Judy Greer is here too.
The screenplay is by JT Mollner, who has two other feature film credits under his belt: a Western called Outlaws and Angels, and a serial killer film called Strange Darling. He directed both of those.
This trailer says only “coming soon,” but the movie is in theaters September 12th.
