New Adaptation of 1 of Stephen King's Most Terrifying Novels Gets Exciting First Look

2025 will be filled with Stephen King adaptations. One of them is set to hit theaters early this fall and has already started treating fans to new goodies.

After the release of The Monkey in February, the follow-up adaptation is Mike Flanagan's The Life of Chuck. Later this year, two more adaptations will follow, one for The Long Walk and a new take on The Running Man. Ahead of The Long Walk's release on Sept. 12, Vanity Fair has officially released the first look at the dystopian horror.

The upcoming The Long Walk is based on Stephen King's 1979 novel of the same name, which he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The upcoming dystopian horror adaptation comes from Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games), with JT Mollner penning the script.

The Long Walk stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Mark Hamill, Garett Wareing, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Judy Greer, Tut Nyuot, Jordan Gonzales, Joshua Odjick, and Izabella Raven.

The horror author has written many bestselling novels, and his works have been adapted into numerous films and TV shows. However, The Long Walk hasn't received an adaptation until Lawrence's upcoming film, but it wasn't for lack of trying. The Long Walk has been in the works for over three decades, as George A. Romero tried to adapt the novel after working on King's 1982's Creepshow, with many other filmmakers interested in bringing the story to the big screen, including Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist) and André Øvredal.

"I think maybe what held it back in those other adaptations is that merciless quality," King said about the previous attempts to adapt the novel. "Somebody putting down the money for it must’ve been, like, 'I don’t know…this is hard. This is a painful one.' "

Lawrence also revealed that he attempted to make The Long Walk before, and failed. "It crossed my desk in 2006, around the time I was making I Am Legend. The guy who wrote I Am Legend was one of the producers — Akiva Goldsman, who’s now a friend of mine. He gave me a copy. We were trying to find something to do together, and I totally fell in love with it. We went to get the rights, and I think it might have been Frank Darabont who had nabbed them right before we could. I fell in love with it, but we couldn’t do it."

The Long Walk Adaptation Will Feature an Important Change

The Long Walk is not terrifying the supernatural way other King novels are, but it's a dystopian sci-fi horror where one hundred teenage boys, two from each state, gather at the northern tip of Maine to start a life-or-death walk along the U.S. Route 1 every year, and they're not allowed to fall below a base speed of four miles per hour. The last survivor wins a cash prize. "You know that, slowly, these kids are going to be picked away one by one by one, which is not unlike pretty much any horror movie that you see," director Lawrence teased.

While in the book, the boys have to walk without stopping or falling behind at a pace of four miles per hour, the adaptation will feature a new target. In The Long Walk, the group of boys will move at a slower and steadier pace of three miles per hour. "They changed it at my advice," King revealed, "because four miles an hour was just too f—king fast."

The Long Walk premieres in theaters on Sept. 12.

Source: Vanity Fair