Prepare for another Stephen King adaptation this fall as The Long Walk will go up on the big screen. And it’s brutal, like in Lord of the Flies meet The Hunger Games brutal. It begins with a single step and whatever you do, do not falter.
In a bleak dystopian alternative US, where a military regime governs the country, the young Ray Garraty enters an annual televised contest named The Long Walk, where the winner chooses the prize. Along the walk, Garraty’s and the other 99 participants’ physical, mental, and emotional endurance is put to the test as they struggle to obey one simple rule: don’t stop walking. Ever. Or else you get a ticket.
The director Francis Lawrence is no stranger to dystopian stories, having directed the Hunger Games movies and I Am Legend (2007). Around the time Lawrence was making I Am Legend, he eyed the opportunity to film The Long Walk, but he didn’t have the rights then. With his strong visual style, which is seen in the trailer, makes Lawrence well suited to direct The Long Walk.
Following his debut in Licorice Pizza (2021), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, Cooper Hoffman plays the role of the main charter, Raymond Garraty. The BAFTA Rising Star winner David Jonsson plays Peter McVries. I was also thrilled to see Mark Hamill up in that jeep as The Major, and there’s no doubt that he’ll deliver that unsettling iciness of the tyrannical leader of the march as only he can do.
The trailer does a good job framing Lawrence style and the intense atmosphere that meets the participants on the march through the bleak highway. It also depicts how I picture it when I read the book. The decision to lower the required walking speed of the competition to 3 miles per hour instead of 4 miles per hour, as it is in the book, helps with the realism of the story.
Watch the trailer below and see if you want to put on a good pair of boots and join The Long Walk on September 12.
The Long Walk Official Trailer
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