The first 22 minutes of The Long Walk were screened at Comic-Con, plus a new trailer has dropped online
Last year, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Long Walk (which was, like The Running Man and Thinner, published under the pen name Richard Bachman) went into production, with director Francis Lawrence, whose previous credits include Constantine, I Am Legend, Water for Elephants, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Parts 1 and 2, Red Sparrow, Slumberland, and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, at the helm. Lionsgate will be releasing the film on September 12th – and today, the film was promoted with a panel at San Diego Comic-Con! Although a trailer was just recently released , SDCC attendees got to see a new trailer, which was introduced by a video of Stephen King (he’s not at SDCC). JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray said it’s a “very cool trailer, has the shocking image of seeing Mark Hamill use the F-word. Does a good job setting up how it’s a dystopian story that starts like Stand by Me but gets more violent and desperate as it goes on.” That trailer has now made its way online and can be seen in the embed above.
An adaptation of The Long Walk has been trudging through development hell for decades. At one point, the rights were in the hands of Frank Darabont, who made the King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist. Then the rights passed over to New Line Cinema, where Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark director André Øvredal was hired to direct the film from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt, whose credits include the two most recent Scream movies. While doing the press rounds for his film The Last Voyage of the Demeter last year, Øvredal revealed that he was no longer involved with The Long Walk, and said not making that movie is one of the big regrets of his life.
Strange Darling writer JT Mollner has written the screenplay for the version of The Long Walk that has been made. The novel is set in a future dystopian America ruled over by a militaristic dictator, and the titular event is an annual contest in which 100 teenagers must keep a steady pace of at least four miles an hour under strict rules until only one of them is left alive. The winner receives “The Prize”: anything they want for the rest of their life. The story follows Raymond Garraty, a 16-year-old from Pownal, Maine, as well as a group of other teenagers with good, bad, and mysterious intentions.
Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Garrett Wareing (Ransom Canyon), Tut Nyuot (The Witcher: Blood Origin), Charlie Plummer (National Anthem), Ben Wang (American Born Chinese), Jordan Gonzalez (Pretty Little Liars: Summer School), Joshua Odjick (Welcome to Derry), and Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbit) star in the film alongside Judy Greer (the Halloween and Ant-Man franchises) and Star Wars legend Mark Hamill, who recently worked on another King adaptation called The Life of Chuck.
Lawrence is producing The Long Walk through his company about:blank, alongside Roy Lee, Cameron MacConomy, and Steven Schneider. Meredith Wieck and Erin Jones-Wesley are overseeing for Lionsgate. Filming took place in rural locations throughout the province of Manitoba.
The San Diego Comic-Con panel was moderated by Eric Vespe and Anthony Breznican, hosts of the Stephen King podcast, The Kingcast, with guests including David Jonsson, Tut Nyuot, Garrett Wareing, Charlie Plummer, and Mark Hamill, along with producer Roy Lee and screenwriter JT Mollner. Bumbray provided the following report: “Don’t expect this to be watered down. Stephen King, the director and Lionsgate wanted this to be a hardcore, unrelenting adaptation. The writer, JT Mollner, directed Strange Darling and wrote the adaptation. He said Francis Lawrence pushed them to make it a heavy film. The film was shot in chronological order to show the decline of the walkers. Garrett Wareing’s Stebbins plays the guy in the walk who really knows the lore of the walk but comes down with a strange illness that, as he says, was fun to play. Tut plays Arthur, a religious fellow who’s grounded and loveable. Comic-Con was actually Tut’s first time in the U.S (the movie was shot in Winnipeg) and he was excited. As Vespe says, the boys aren’t enemies. They bond, and it’s their brotherhood that makes it tragic as they start to die.
This was David Jonsson’s second Hall H after Alien: Romulus (the crowd loved him). He said that to him, Stephen King is an auteur, and writes things that have the tendency to become timeless. Mark Hamill grew up in a military family and did his last two years of high school on a Marine base in Japan. He said he saw insane stuff, so he felt like he knew exactly how to play his role. He wears sunglasses almost the entire movie. Said he was blown away by the young cast and it’s hard to believe King wrote The Long Walk and The Life of Chuck – very different stories that came from the same man, so it’s unfair to consider him just a horror author. He became friends King when they were seated together at TIFF at the Life of Chuck premiere.
Hamill added that Mike Flanagan changed his career because he was planning to retire from on-screen acting and would only do voiceover. But then Flanagan cast him in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Life of Chuck and his career in live action really took off again.”
Attendees were then shown the first 22 minutes of the film. Bumbray said it’s a “very cool opening. Introduces us to all the walkers and ends with the killing of the first walker. HARD R. They didn’t soften the King dialogue.”
Are you looking forward to The Long Walk? What do you think of the information that came out of Comic-Con? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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