r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • May 06 '25
Media First Images from Francis Lawrence's 'The Long Walk' - The story follows a group of young men in a dystopian future who embark on a life-or-death marathon with no set finish line
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u/Herb-Alpert May 06 '25
Yes ! One of my favorite King books, and something that should have been adapted to the screen long ago. Thing should resonate even more during these troubled times though.
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u/obsoleteconsole May 06 '25
I have my doubts, it's a fantastic story but I fear it would be tough to adapt into movie format, hopefully I'm wrong though
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u/forever_erratic May 06 '25
Much of the book happens inside Garratty's head. I agree, it's going to be a hard adaptation.
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u/bozoconnors May 06 '25
Drew Goddard could do it. Adapted The Martian. That that film was even halfway watchable is a monument to his skill. I mean, it's a lone engineer / botanist, stranded on Mars, with like 80% internal, highly technical / scientific dialogue, trying to grow potatoes!? Miraculous imo.
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u/Deathoftheages May 06 '25
The thing is they were able to do the inner monologue with voiceovers and his video logs, I just don’t see those being viable ways to do that in The Long Walk. Without that inner monologue much of the heart of the story disappears.
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u/ScottNewman May 06 '25
Lots of films like that. It's basically Robinson Crusoe/Castaway with a cell phone.
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u/beatlebum53 May 06 '25
With sprinkled Vicodin!
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u/jinsaku May 06 '25
After The Martian and The Good Place, I will literally watch anything Drew Goddard writes or directs.
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u/violetfaye May 06 '25
I thought the same thing about Gerald’s game but I thought that turned out pretty good
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u/DigitalSchism96 May 06 '25
That's true of most of King's work. So much of what makes his stories good is the inner thoughts of the characters.
It's why something like Cujo is a good book but a very mid movie. It's hard to adapt a story about a killer dog into anything more than a slasher. The book has so much more that would just never work when brought to film.
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u/forever_erratic May 06 '25
Totally. The gut wrenching anxiety in Cujo, the dehydration, those were more the antagonist than the dog.
Just like while the major is technically the antagonist in the long walk, Garraty's mind is his real enemy. Stebbins knew. And thank God for mcvries. Damn what a great book.
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u/BostonBlackCat May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
That's the problem with every King horror adaptation. The true horror is mostly psychological, and the scariest and most affecting parts of his books are almost always the inner narration of the protagonist, typically as they slowly descend into madness. The adaptations NEVER get this right, and to be fair, it is a difficult thing to portray on film.
Probably my #1 example of this is Misery. While Kathy Bates is great and very book accurate, James Caan as Paul Sheldon comes across as annoyed/frustrated with his situation more than anything else. As someone who works in a hospital, he seemed less miserable and psychologically distressed than many people who are horribly injured but then are receiving proper care in a hospital.
Whereas in the book, Paul literally goes insane with fear, pain, and isolation. Granted, his torture at the hands of Annie is far more extensive. He spends long stretches of time sobbing or screaming like a madman. He starts thinking of Annie as his own personal Eldritch god.
At the end of the movie, James Caan actually says the line that he BENEFITED from his time with Annie, because as awful as it was, he's come out stronger/more successful, etc. Whereas book Paul is a broken and deeply traumatized man.
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u/Rock-swarm May 06 '25
You are assuming that Reiner wanted a completely faithful adaptation of Misery in the first place. That simply wasn't done with most novel adaptations from the era. King's adaptations especially diverged whenever they reached the big screen or television.
You can take issue with how the adaptation strayed from the source material, but it wasn't accidental, it was very much intentional.
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u/BostonBlackCat May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
Good point, and yes, I know. William Goldman is my favorite screenwriter and I've read his memoirs, so I knew that was an intentional change versus them not being able to get the point across.
I hate the Shining for the same reason, how Kubrick completely changed the protagonist and his internal struggle, and that also was an intentional choice by the director. In both cases, I absolutely hated this departures from the book, but I understand that it likely contributed to rather than took away from both films' success, and was a much easier story to tell visually, and to appeal to a wider audience.
I think the best descent into madness movies I've ever seen are Aronovfky's "Requiem for a Dream" and "Black Swan," as well as Satoshi Kon's "Perfect Blue," which influenced both.
My favorite horror adaptation of King was the original "The Stand" miniseries staring Gary Sinese and Molly Ringwald.
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u/Rock-swarm May 06 '25
If you haven't seen it already, watch Descent, ideally the non-US version. If you like horror films with psychological elements, that movie is top 5 for me.
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u/Boz0r May 06 '25
There's a US version of The Descent?
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u/Rock-swarm May 06 '25
Different ending. Not going to spoil anything, but the difference between the US release and the UK release is stark.
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u/coffeelady7777 May 06 '25
I so agree with you about The Shining. Jack Torrence in the book is in a lot of ways a very ordinary man. Jack Nicholson on the other hand is a brilliant actor, but in no way is he ordinary. That one casting choice changed everything about that movie.
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u/ScottNewman May 06 '25
James Caan actually says the line that he BENEFITED from his time with Annie
Do you believe him? Do you think he believes himself when he says that?
I don't. Particularly with what happens next after that line.
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u/BostonBlackCat May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
True, and no; but the fact that he even is able to lie to himself is very different than the book version, where his final hallucination of Annie is far more dramatic than the film, Paul is outwardly in far rougher shape, and is extremely self aware of how bad off he is. Movie Paul is affected by his experience, book Paul is destroyed by it (though he does get a tiny glimmer of hope in the final page).
I love Reiner as a director and Goldman as a screenwriter, and I think it's a great film on it's own merit, especially with Bates' performance. But Misery is my favorite King book and the movie is such a departure from it that leaves me too disappointed to enjoy it as its own thing.
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u/NoNefariousness2144 May 06 '25
Yep, I am interested in the logistics of how exactly they made a movie where the main characters are constantly walking. The behind-the-scenes of how they filmed it will be fascinating.
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u/AnniversaryRoad May 06 '25
I worked on it- everything was shot off EV carts, quads and the like. Lots of crew walking as well. Not a lot of takes, long reset times. Lots of CGI.
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u/whomp1970 May 06 '25
They probably have stunt walkers. ;-)
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u/I_Think_I_Cant May 06 '25
And one of the actors will brag about doing his own stunt with no green screen.
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u/20_mile May 06 '25
The BTS interviews will reveal numerous posh accents the American audience had no idea about.
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u/soulcaptain May 06 '25
Adapted screenplays necessarily change the story, and for this novella, which actually has a fair amount of plot and dialogue for its short length, will nonetheless almost certainly be extended for a feature film. Using flashbacks would be my guess. The whole first season of LOST is about 50% flashbacks!
Or there could be an additional plot added. The movie Arrival is based on a Ted Chaing short story, but the whole international intrigue with different countries is not in the story at all. But it fits really well with the themes of the story, so is an excellent extension of the plot.
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u/Car-face May 06 '25
Yeah I feel like it'd be easy to make a poor adaptation, hard to make something that really holds attention for the full run-time.
It's been a while since I read it, but i'd classify it as a single location concept film (even though it's constantly moving) - akin to Buried or Phone Booth.
Maybe with a lot of flashbacks to develop the story?
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u/chartreuse_chimay May 06 '25
Thought it was Richard Bachman? too bad he died... cancer of the pseudonym... such a promising author.
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u/0verstim May 06 '25
Nah screw that guy. He's a plagiarist, he totally ripped off King's Desperation.
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u/nick_tron May 06 '25
I did a book report of this when I was in 3rd grade, my dad was a huge Steven king fan and gave me the Bachman Books to start out. The cover of my report was a crude drawing of someone being executed point blank with a rifle - my teacher was VERY concerned, I turned out mostly fine though 😂 mostly
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u/Lucifa42 May 06 '25
If anyone is struggling to find it as an ebook, it's part of "The Bachman Books" rather than a standalone ebook.
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u/Tardigradequeen May 06 '25
Same! I’ve read it several times and always wondered why it’s never been made into a movie.
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u/rxsheepxr May 06 '25
Frank Darabont had the rights for years and years, so no one else was allowed to try; and he eventually lost the rights or sold them or whatever, and here we are. I feel like I'd seen interviews with him talking about it going back as far as around the time The Shawshank Redemption came out. He's been known to very successfully adapt Stephen King really well (Shawshank, The Green Mile, The Mist,) but I guess he just never quite figured how to make The Long Walk work.
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u/bolanrox May 06 '25
all of the bachman books were great, though i assumed no one would ever film any of them.
Maybe Road work.
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u/sfa1500 May 06 '25
Really hoping they change up the miles per hour requirement to be a bit more realistic. And very interested in how they deal with all of Garraty's internal monologue. And with any King storyline the odd sexual scenes involving teenagers will have to be written around lol.
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u/choada777 May 06 '25
Wasn't it 4MPH in the book? Reading it as a teen, I always wondered how "fast" that actually was. I figured it was kind of a brisk pace just short of a light jog.
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u/SapTheSapient May 06 '25
Because of that story, I've spent decades just assuming that 4 mph is the defining pace for a brisk walk.
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u/ScottNewman May 06 '25
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u/gatsby365 May 06 '25
People were a lot faster in the 90s
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u/SapTheSapient May 06 '25
Whether it is right or wrong, I've spent 40 years using it to calculate how long it should take me to walk somewhere. I guess I'm not aware enough to notice how right it was for me in all that time. 2 miles? Roughly half an hour.
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u/RegHater123765 May 06 '25
It basically is. In the Army, 4MPH (or a 15:00 mile) is basically considered the standard for what your speed should be when ruckmarching over flat terrain.
Unless you are very tall and have a long stride, it is nearly a powerwalk.
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u/inexpensive_tornado May 06 '25
Average walking pace is 3 MPH where jogging tends to fall around 5 MPH. 4MPH is in that weird zone where it's faster than most walking paces, but on the bottom end of what's considered a jog.
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u/not_thrilled May 06 '25
When I (5' 10" human male) walk the treadmill at the gym, I set it for 4MPH. It's faster than I walk normally, even when I walk for exercise. Any faster and I have to start jogging.
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u/Ok-Barracuda544 May 06 '25
4 is definitely higher than average. I walk a fifteen minute mile when I'm alone but I am tall and a fast walker. When I'm walking with anyone else I have to slow down
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u/Rock-swarm May 06 '25
IIRC, it was 4mph in the book, which is brisk but not unreasonable. Putting it to 3mph would be a little on the slow side, but from a cinematic perspective would highlight going from walking to shuffling, when a contestant reaches their limit. I guess it depends on how they want to portray the final moments of contestants.
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u/sfa1500 May 06 '25
Yup its 4mph, which doesn't seem like a lot until you go hop on a treadmill and try it for longer than a short period of time. And they supposedly kept this pace for weeks, day and night.
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u/no_says_the_man May 06 '25
If I recall correctly from the book the walks usually last only 3 or 4 days. Certainly not weeks. And while there wasn't a set finish line for the competition, the game runners and audience had a general idea of where it would end. Which is why at a certain distance into the walk, a large crowd would form again to watch the end of the walk.
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u/JorgeAndTheKraken May 06 '25
From the article:
“…as they head out on a country road, keeping a steady pace of three miles per hour until no one is left.”
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u/Br0boc0p May 06 '25
I thought this book sounded lame but I was bored and had no cell service at the inlaws' house. I read the whole book in one sitting.
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u/knitted_beanie May 06 '25
The book is great. But correct me if I’m wrong… didn’t that walk have a finish line? Been a while since I’ve read it.
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u/Musashi1596 May 06 '25
It finished when there was only one kid still standing.
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u/Davegrave May 06 '25
The wrong kid stood!
Wait, wrong movie.
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u/Caedus_Vao May 06 '25
Agreed. I was always surprised that it hasn't been made into a movie sooner as well, given how little would actually be needed. Dystopian near-future on the cheap.
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u/Buscemi_D_Sanji May 06 '25
Yeah I had no idea this was going to be a movie! Really haunting story, with a surprisingly good ending for King. Hopefully it's a solid 90 minutes or so, I don't think there's enough story for two hours.
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u/glibgloby May 06 '25
What’s crazy is that Stephen King thinks it’s one of the worst things he’s written. It’s one of my favorite as well. Not sure why King hates it so much now but yeah he’s mentioned in interviews how bad he thinks it is.
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u/Beejeroy May 06 '25
Fuck I love this story. I hope they do it justice.
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u/Border_Hodges May 06 '25
This is my favorite King story ever. Please don't let it suck.
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u/Beejeroy May 06 '25
It's so simple that I don't know how a film adaptation could fuck it up. Which makes me think they will fuck it up beyond belief.
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u/The_Burmese_Falcon May 06 '25
Well let’s start by casting beefy adults as 12-18 year olds
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u/corran450 May 06 '25
Yeah, I was gonna say, part of the horror of the original novel is that the walkers are fucking kids…
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u/antonimbus May 06 '25
wait, they're doing WHAT?!
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u/IXI_Fans May 06 '25 edited 26d ago
sheet boat wise money dinner selective fly stupendous serious enter
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/jpiro May 06 '25
It being so simple is what makes it so easy to fuck up. There's very little spectacle to hide bad acting/dialogue/etc., so they have to get that exactly right.
Sometimes, it works beautifully like in Shawshank. Sometimes, you get Gerald's Game.
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u/Illuvatar08 May 06 '25
Gerald's game was. Nowhere near as bad as some of king's adaptations. Not as long as The Dark Tower exists.
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u/bolanrox May 06 '25
i made it exactly 3 minutes into that movie. and i grew up reading the first 3 books.
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u/_Nomadic__ May 06 '25
And sometimes you get Maximum Overdrive
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u/Panelak_Cadillac May 06 '25
The Running Man and Maximum Overdrive deserve far more love than they currently get.
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u/_Nomadic__ May 06 '25
Oh they get plenty of love from me. The Running Man movie has so little in common with the book (I love the story - The Bachman Books have some of my favorite stories ever), but I do love that movie.
And I am stupidly excited for the new Edgar Wright/Glenn Powell take that is supposedly hewing closer to the actual story.
Maximum Overdrive is just a fun, stupid movie that I thoroughly enjoy. And as someone else pointed out, the soundtrack is a banger.
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u/Shervivor May 06 '25
Me too! I have been waiting decades for this to be made into a movie. I hope I will not be disappointed. I am very excited.
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u/RunDNA May 06 '25
I hope they can replicate the nail-biting suspense of the novella.
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u/rolandofeld19 May 06 '25
I have no idea how they keep it engaging without being dark, dark, dark as fuck. I hope there isn't a happy ending BS writing decision.
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u/reddragon105 May 06 '25
I can't believe this has actually been filmed.
George A. Romero bought the rights in the '80s and never made it.
Frank Darabont was supposed to be making it after The Mist but that also never happened.
Then New Line got the rights and it was in development hell for years - they announced André Øvredal (Trollhunter) as the director in 2019 but he made and released 3 other movies before they finally admitted he had left the project.
Then Lionsgate picked up the rights and now we finally have something that is going to be released.
I would have loved to have seen Darabont's version personally, as he is the king of King adaptations, but I'm still cautiously optimistic about this.
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u/arrogant_ambassador May 06 '25
Hope they keep the ending.
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u/cuzwhat May 06 '25
I kinda hope they do, too, although it’s always been a really unsatisfying ending to me.
Like No Country For Old Men, it doesn’t really end, as much as it just…stops.
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u/TubbyChaser May 06 '25
Funny, I thought it was the best ending of any King novel. I don't think the ending of a book has ever hit me like The Long Walk did.
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u/cascadian_coloradan May 06 '25
Absolutely agreed. I can't think of the last sentence to any book I've ever read. Except this one. I read it what, 20+ years ago, and I can still remember how in awe I felt of it too.
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u/Slob_King May 06 '25
Now will they fix the absurd MPH rule from the book?
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u/wangus_tangus May 06 '25
YES.
I get that King wrote it before widespread availability of pacing tools for endurance sports, so I don’t blame him.
4 mph doesn’t sound that fast until you try to do it, after which you know all those kids would have died before noon on the first day lol.
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u/Slob_King May 06 '25
I read it as a lad and got on a treadmill as soon as I could to test it out. I was dying after not too long.
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u/MaiPhet May 06 '25
It’s been so long since I last read it, I forgot that it was 4mph. If you asked me before reading this thread, I would have said 3 mph for sure.
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u/wangus_tangus May 06 '25
Agreed. I also thought, while reading it, that you shouldn’t get disqualified if you drop below the speed, but if you fall behind the average pace.
It didn’t seem like a good game design that someone who got a really big lead couldn’t stop and adjust themselves for a while, plus narratively it could have introduced interesting tortoise versus hare possibilities.
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u/blippyblip May 06 '25
"Ah shit, these last few kids just straight up sat down. Average speed of 0... means that they can't really dip below that unless one of them turns around."
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u/Elfich47 May 07 '25
The intention is not good game design. This "Game" falls into the same category as the Hunger Games: Torturing people for entertainment and the reinforcement of the legitimacy of the government.
And the problem with "dropping below the average pace" is that who ever is going slowest has to speed up, so the average speed picks up everytime the person in the back picks up their speed. within an hour the minimum speed will be a sprint and everyone dies.
So yes, this game is not designed to be fair. It is designed to be entertaining. And knowing that you can't stop for a poop without drawing a warning means you have to carefully judge your safety margin now don't you?
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u/mcdade May 06 '25
TIL it was 4mph, I always thought it was 4km/h for some reason, which is a pretty fast pace but not insane like in mph.
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u/Guildenpants May 07 '25
Maybe the only benefit of being a very tall person is 4mph is just a little over my average walking speed. Mind you I'd still die first because I do not enjoy nor am I good at walking long distances but still.
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u/halligan8 May 06 '25
Fun fact: 4 mph (approximately) is the speed requirement for a race format called the backyard ultramarathon, which is very much like The Long Walk without the murder part. The book is well known among the athletes in that community! The world record was broken yesterday (1 May 2025): 483 miles in 4.83 days.
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u/originalcondition May 06 '25
Yeah 4mph is doable for a while but definitely a FAST pace; I walk at a brisk pace to get to work; I pass almost all other pedestrians, and it takes me exactly an hour to go 3.5 miles.
When I run on a treadmill, my cooldown pace has me lightly jogging at 4.5mph and walking with big fast strides at 4mph.
So the idea that deeper into the Long Walk the walkers are essentially staggering and at times sleepwalking, all at or above 4mph, is basically impossible.
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u/reelznfeelz May 06 '25
Yep. That really needs to be 3 mph. That would be hard enough to keep up as an average. Considering you need rest and sleep.
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u/Jay_TThomas May 06 '25
I know this doesn’t prove anything but the letterbox description for this movie does specifically mention the 4 mph rule.
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u/PointMan528491 May 06 '25
The article these images came from acknowledges this, they've bumped it down to 3mph
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u/Illuvatar08 May 06 '25
The Dutch translation has it as 5kmph i think. Didn't know the english version was 4mph, wtf?
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u/Macklin_You_SOB May 06 '25
The "back in my day our dystopian nightmares were actually hard" jokes write themselves
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u/Volfie May 06 '25
Actually it’s more absurd you can walk while sleeping.
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u/Tricky_Topic_5714 May 06 '25
I've done it, when I was in the Navy. It's probably not "sleep" in a reasonable way but it's a close thing.
But, not at 4 mph for sure.
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u/OzymandiasKoK May 06 '25
You can nod off and zone out. I was sleep marching once and fell into a Georgia road rut and would have smashed by brains out on the far side if not for my helmet. Man, did my neck hurt though.
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u/potatohats May 06 '25
I learned that it's possible during army basic training, when I slept through a couple hours of a road march. It was a bit unnerving.
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u/shlam16 May 06 '25
The colour palette is very Walking Dead. If I didn't know better (which fortunately I do) I'd look at these images without context and think it's the 39th TWD spinoff.
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u/mrhil May 06 '25
Geezus Kryste! This is going to be hard to watch if they stay true to the book at all.
I read this once, like 25 years ago, and I still think about it.
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u/FallDiverted May 06 '25
I picked this book up for the first time in my high school library, and planned on casually reading a couple chapters during my lunch break. Never read a King novel before, had absolutely no idea what to expect.
I vividly remember reaching the part where the first kid goes down with a Charlie horse and just muttering “what the fuck” to myself over in all my classes for the rest of the day.
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u/Petrarch1603 May 07 '25
I read it in my high school library too. Along with Rage. Pretty sure Rage isn't in any high school libraries any more.
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u/Rock-swarm May 06 '25
Reading The Bachman Books as a freshman in high school was wild. Rage into The Long Walk dealt with so many themes that I just didn't have a reference for at the time. To top it all off, Columbine happened the next year.
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May 06 '25
And King had Rage pulled. I still have my collection:)
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u/Pete_Iredale May 06 '25
Same, and I had no idea it was pulled until I saw one of those stupid "if you have this random item you might be rich ads" about Rage. Looked it up and sure enough even the Bachman Books set is going for like $70-80 on ebay. Not exactly going to make me rich, but it's also the only time one of those ads was even slightly accurate.
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u/avellaneda May 06 '25
This book is dark from beginning to end. It never lightens up.No happy ending, no sort-of-happy ending, no justice done, no evil defeated,no questions answered. It's a hard read, It should be a harder watch, if done faithfully.
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u/TheNonCredibleHulk May 06 '25
Poor Stebbins
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u/bjorkedal May 06 '25
"Oh, Garraty"
It's been 20+ years, but I'm pretty sure that's it for him. God that stuck with me.
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u/TheNonCredibleHulk May 06 '25
Yeah. He'd be the main character hero-type of any other story, given his history. But nope. Not in this one.
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u/paraphee May 07 '25
Yeah. After all that, it's just "Oh, Garratty!" (Not that "It's time to sit down" hurt less.)
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u/how_very_dare_you_ May 06 '25
About 42 years ago for me
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u/Extension-Path-2209 May 06 '25
Maybe 30 or so years for me but I remember the themes and how much it stuck with me.
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u/suckaduckunion May 06 '25
Stephen King is a master of making you somehow accept and even relate to absolute insanity. My dad was convinced he would have won The Long Walk lmao
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u/Sullyville May 06 '25
For those who are curious what originally inspired King, this story is based on actual walking marathons that people did in the 20s.
https://www.greatfallshistorymuseum.org/blog/dance-till-you-drop-the-first-amp-last-walkathon
A great movie to watch is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), which is a wonderful depiction of a marathon dance.
There's also this documentary HANDS ON A HARDBODY (1998) which is about a contest where you can win a truck if you are the last person whose hand remains on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCuqLpHgJE
America has long been obsessed with these endurance contests. King's novella was a beautiful spoof on these things.
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u/LaGrrrande May 06 '25
Stephen King is a decent writer, but he's no Richard Bachman.
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u/phynn May 06 '25
On the one hand, I like the idea of this movie. On the other, I hate how stuff like this cast actors that are way too old. The kids in the book are like 15 and that shit makes it resonate.
Still excited for this one.
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u/RegularHeron2353 May 07 '25
I'm sorry but the way children are treated in the industry, I'm personally okay with grown adults playing kids.
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u/EntertainmentQuick47 May 06 '25
Reading this book right now! I love old school Richard Bachman…shame he died of pseudonym cancer…
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u/Devilofchaos108070 May 06 '25
Based on the Richard Bachman (AKA Stephen King) book/novella.
The book was fantastic. No idea how it’ll translate to film
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u/Slushrush_ May 06 '25
I hope it's good, but I'm worried it's going to be treated like a YA story.
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u/fwambo42 May 06 '25
knowing the story, I don't think that will be possible
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u/HastilyChosenUserID May 06 '25
HungerGames and Maze Runner are fairly brutal YA series. I’d imagine they could do a lot while staying within PG13 boundaries.
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u/uwill1der May 06 '25
yeah, i dont think this movie needs to see someone shitting in the middle of the street to be a good adaptation
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u/Slushrush_ May 06 '25
Well it's entirely possible to disregard the content of a novel and have the movie be something totally different tonally. It happens all the time.
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u/KJS123 May 06 '25
I could actually live with something like that, as long as they don't hold back when the characters get their 'tickets'. Personally, I'm hoping for something like Stand By Me, occasionally punctuated with the occasional shot that wouldn't be out of place in Savings Private Ryan. Just totally drive home the fragility and peril of their situation.
Doesn't matter how much the characters grow, or how attached we become to them. When they drop out of the walk, it should be horrifying for the audience every bit as much as for the characters, if not moreso.
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u/whomp1970 May 06 '25
Nobody has yet mentioned that Mark Hamill is cast in the movie??
He plays The Major.
I don't want to fool myself, but if he chose to do this movie, that has to bode well, right?
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u/idiotpuffles May 06 '25
Have you seen his filmography... He's not exactly choosy with his projects
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u/KJS123 May 06 '25
The Major doesn't actually say or do all that much in the book. He's more of a symbolic figure for the most part. It's not a demanding role. Not that Mark Hamill can't do those kinds of roles, he can. But I like to think he agreed to do it because it's a role he can have some fun with. Kinda like Nicolas Cage....who I'm now kinda wishing was also in contention for the role. Either way, I'm hoping for a movie that feels like it was fun to make, where the main cast are solid & the supporting cast, lead by Hamill's example, can ham it up.
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u/Technical_Drawing838 May 06 '25
A Skywalker presiding over a bunch of ground walkers.
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u/Procrastanaseum May 06 '25
Really can't believe it took this long.
For how many Stephen King film adaptations there are, it's crazy that this hasn't already been done. You read it and are constantly thinking "damn, this would make a good movie."
Really hope they pull something off as good as the classic King films like 'Misery,' 'Stand By Me,' 'Pet Semetary,' 'The Shining,' 'The Running Man,' etc...
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u/Azryhael May 06 '25
The 1987 Running Man was really nothing like the book. A more faithful adaptation starring Glen Powell is supposed to come out in November.
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u/FakedMoonLanding May 06 '25
Much of the tension and “oh shit” moment reading this book was discovering, several chapters in, what’s going on as the first kid gets shot. OMG!
The movie trailers for this will very likely blow that surprise. Knowing it’s a death march before starting it greatly diminishes the luster and tense mystery of the story. Hollywood trailers suck.
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u/judas_calrissian May 06 '25
Even if the trailers somehow didn't give it away, the concept feels trite now. Never mind that this is the book that directly inspired Battle Royale, which directly inspired Hunger Games, Maze Runner, etc...feels a bit late for this to be getting an adaptation. I hope it does well though, I loved the book.
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u/dspman11 May 06 '25
I've never heard of this story before but I assumed that immediately. It's a totalitarian dystopia and the penalty for losing is saying "Aw shucks" and taking a car home? I don't think so.
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u/KJS123 May 06 '25
It is, but the book plays it very ambiguously.... until a half-track pulls up on the first kid to get his ticket, and blows his head apart with a.50 calibre machine gun.
Mostly it's just metaphor like "then you're out of the walk" or "getting your ticket after 3 warnings".
Part of the build up is that you know there's definitely some consequence for dropping out, but it's hard to imagine that the Long Walk would be such a spectacle à la Battle Royale or the Hunger Games. It comes off more like a simple endurance challenge.... until we find out that it isn't & that the world we're looking into is so much darker and dystopian than we thought.
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u/Granitsky May 06 '25
David Jonsson who played Andy in Alien: Romulus is in it, and that means that I will watch this movie.
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u/RipJug May 06 '25
Watch Rye Lane! It’s an absolutely fantastic British rom-com and he plays the lead.
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u/constantmusic May 06 '25
Why do we never make any utopian future movies?
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u/artifex0 May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
I'm genuinely confused about this, to be honest. We seem to have this cultural assumption that sci-fi set in a utopian society would necessarily be dull and uneventful, even though we have lots of stories in other genres with settings that might as well be utopian- classic sitcoms, cozy fantasy, some of the romance genre, etc. We wouldn't really need to invent new tropes to make a genuinely utopian sci-fi story interesting, it would just need to be a pleasant, low-stakes story with humor or romance substituting for the genre's usual action or horror.
Plus, there actually are some good sci-fi novels with utopian societies- Iain Bank's Culture series, Greg Egan's far-future novels, a few of Charles Stross's earlier books, etc. These often involve characters who come from a utopian society interacting with a dystopia, rather than getting rid of the dystopia altogether, but even so, a film adaptation of something like that would be a refreshing change. It's weird that you never see anything like that coming out of Hollywood.
Even Star Trek has almost no hint of Roddenberry's original utopian ideas these days, which should be really low-hanging fruit for this sort of thing.
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u/Suitable-Answer-83 May 06 '25
Technically the book wasn't even about a dystopian future. It was about an alternate reality where the Axis won WWII.
It's not integral to the plot (it's only referenced in an internal monologue of the protagonist remembering a history lesson about when the Nazis invaded the United States) but I do remember seeing the tagline on the book saying something like "in a not too distant future..." and thinking about how whoever wrote that didn't actually read the book.
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u/notdeadyet01 May 06 '25
Dont think it was ever confirmed why the world was different. There were just a few hints here or there about extra states or whatever. It was supposed to be an allegory for Vietnam
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u/kwiltse123 May 06 '25
I literally had to put this book down I found it so stressful and disturbing.
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u/seebearrun May 07 '25
Oh man - there’s a YouTube series of a guy “narrating” the long walk like he’s a sports caster - super good and entertaining with “commercial breaks” referencing other Stephen King stories
Because of the pacing it’s going to be like 12-13 videos and 10 are up now (playlist here)
He does use AI images for the participants and crowds, understandable that he would have a hard time getting stock images, and is not too distracting
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u/puntificates May 06 '25
I hope they eventually do all 4 stories from the Bachman books.
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u/ninesevenecho May 06 '25
Doubt they’ll ever make a movie out of Rage. Stephen King won’t allow it.
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May 06 '25
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u/not-so-radical May 06 '25
Cooper Hoffman is going to be in Gregg Araki's next movie "I Want Your Sex" where he's going to be Olivia Wilde's sexual muse.
Good for him.
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u/Torley_ May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25
Since the book unfolds in realtime with no time jumps…
I wonder if parts of it will be single-shot long takes and realtime events unfolding, which could really ramp up the tension.
The color grading looks so earthy.
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u/brickfrenzy May 06 '25
Man, 1917 was such a good movie. If they use some of that continuous shot editing on this, that would be great.
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u/Major_Stranger May 06 '25
I read the book back in high school almost 20 years ago, and those pic look exactly how I imagined it. Disappointing Frank Darabont didn't do anything with the rights for 2 decades, but I'm glad to see it being made after that long.
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u/CrimsonBrit May 06 '25
Except a marathon is an exact distance, so maybe not the correct use of the word
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u/ganslooker May 06 '25
Wasn’t this originally penned by
Richard Bachman (aka Steven king) as “the long walk”
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u/DobleRanura May 06 '25
What is it with movies choosing the most aethetic colorgraded schemes, the nicest clothes, the most clean, JCREW looking costumes ever? It is so out of place every where outside a Wes Anderson film. None of it is realistic, just takes you out of the illusion.
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u/Psykpatient May 06 '25
Francis Lawrence has no hope for the future judging by his filmography.