After decades of waiting, Stephen King’s The Long Walk is finally being adapted into a film. A dystopian horror story it’s notable for its lack of a supernatural element and its similarities to later death game stories. The adaptation has been in the works under various creators since the 1980s and is finally beginning filming.

What We Currently Know About The Long Walk

With The Long Walk finally in production, we know some of the cast for the long-awaited Stephen King adaptation. The movie will star Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyout, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Roman Griffin Davis. It is being directed by Francis Lawrence, who previously directed The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with a script by JT Mollner, the writer of Strange Darling. 

A Richard Bachman Classic That Needs An Adaptation

The Long Walk was published in 1979 with Stephen King using the pseudonym Richard Bachman. While it was published after several other books, it’s notable as the first novel King ever wrote, having written it while in college in the late 60s. It has remained popular throughout the years, being reprinted several times, individually and as part of a collection including all of the books written under the Bachman pseudonym.

A Dystopian Death Game Like No Other

Set in a dystopian future America, The Long Walk follows a death game in which a group of teenage boys are forced to march at a set pace until only one of them is left alive. The winner receives a large sum of money and a nebulous “prize” of their choosing. Stephen King heavily focuses on the relationships that forms between the boys as they march for multiple days, dying one by one either of exhaustion or being killed by the soldiers who follow behind enforcing the rules.

With the game element and focus on teenage characters, Stephen King was several decades ahead of his time with The Long Walk. In the 2000s and 2010s death game dystopian novels had a huge boom with Battle Royale, The Maze Runner, and The Hunger Games all being examples that saw success as both novels and movies. With this boom in popularity, it’s odd that the book wasn’t made during the genre’s boom.

Past Attempts To Adapt The Novel

Attempts to adapt Stephen King’s The Long Walk go back to 1988 when George A. Romero was set to direct the movie. The Romero version never manifested and the property went unaddressed until 2007, when Frank Darabont acquired the rights to the film. In the following years, the rights to the movie were passed back and forth numerous times before Lionsgate finally began working on the version that is now being filmed.

Still In The Development Phases

Stephen King fans have been waiting for this adaptation of The Long Walk for several decades, which makes it exciting that it’s finally taking shape. With the book being released in the 1970s and so many false starts, it’s a movie some fans had given up on ever seeing come on the silver screen. Many details are still unknown, such as who the actors will be playing and when the movie will be released, but at least it’s finally being made.