Stephen King Insisted ‘The Long Walk’ Audiences Watch Teenage Characters Die

Following decades of false starts from previously-attached directors including George Romero, Frank Darabont, and André Øvredal, a film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1979 novel, The Long Walk finally hits theaters later this month. It’s been a long road gettin’ from there to here, and King recently told the Times of London he had one condition before he allowed his story about a peculiarly vicious walkathon be made into a movie: Its doomed teenage cast must be shown getting shot—none of that Old Yeller/The Yearling/Bambi cutaway crap.

Directed by The Hunger Games franchise stalwart Francis Lawrence from a script by J.T. Mollner, The Long Walk tells the story of an annual “walking contest” in which male teenage participants, at the behest of a bloodthirsty government regime, are forced to march continuously at a consistent speed or be shot dead. The last man standing is rewarded with “whatever he wants” for “the rest of his life.” Naturally, this totally outrageous offer draws no shortage of cannon fodder eager to volunteer, and the competition is broadcast live on TV.

As King noted to The Times, The Long Walk recruits “the same sort of kids that are pulled into the war machine,” similarly to undeclared conflicts like Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and the War on Terror. “If you look at these superhero movies,” King says, “you’ll see…some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks but you never see any blood. And man, that’s wrong. It’s almost, like, pornographic. I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”

It may sound odd to suggest that not lingering on the bloodshed is the more “pornographic” option, but some might argue that bearing witness to injustice is morally preferable to simply ignoring it. On the other hand, metaphor or not, this is justa movie (about a deadly walkathon, at that!), and as fictional violence is, at worst, morally neutral… it becomes a matter of personal preference whether you want to see Jojo Rabbit take a bullet to the jaw, or not.

Later in the same piece, screenwriter J.T. Mollner adds he believes the story has “generational” appeal as it concerns “beauty, love and the story of friendship” along “with the brutality of hopelessness and terror.”

“We wanted to go all the way. I knew that Stephen King wanted us to go all the way. I knew Lionsgate wanted us to go all the way. If this book got into the wrong hands, studio or filmmakers. It could’ve been neutered. So, I’m very grateful we were able to keep the teeth that the book has,” Mollner said.

The Long Walk opens nationwide on September 12, 2025.

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