There have been plenty of moments in Stephen King adaptations that went too far. The prolific horror author has had dozens of novels and short stories turned into films, so it makes sense that some directors would take things to the next level. In the case of “The Long Walk,” however, King himself had one brutal condition for his novel being made into a movie: he wanted director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter J.T. Mollner to refuse to hold anything back.
Written by King while he was in college and initially published in 1979 under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman, “The Long Walk” envisions a dystopian future where young men compete in a grueling contest in which they must walk at least four miles an hour until only one remains alive. An extravagant reward awaits the winner, but everyone else meets certain death at the hands of the police who follow their journey.
Turning “The Long Walk” into a film, then, meant showing the on-screen deaths of a whole lot of teenagers. King couldn’t conceive of a screen adaptation that skimped on the violence, telling The Times of London, “If you look at these superhero movies, you’ll see … some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks but you never see any blood.” He didn’t want his brutal story — an allegory for young men being fed to the war machine that was Vietnam — to suffer the same fate. “I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother,” King recalled. “And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”
Director Francis Lawrence is no stranger to showing violence against kids
Director Francis Lawrence was more than fine with showing the shooting deaths of children on screen; after all, that’s a question he had to consider when he directed numerous installments in the “Hunger Games” franchise, including “Catching Fire,” both “Mockingjay” films, and 2023’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” his captivating return to Panem.
Like “The Long Walk,” “The Hunger Games” is about children placed in mortal peril by an evil dystopia. As he was directing the “Mockingjay” films, putting a capstone on the initial series, Lawrence told Time that he thought a lot about what showing violence on screen could mean for the real world. “I don’t want to promote violence, and part of the themes of these movies is that you have to be careful going into conflict,” he said. “Even if revolution is needed, you have to be very careful because there will be loss and there will be consequence.”
As he approached “The Long Walk,” Lawrence pushed hard for the movie to be rated R rather than have its violence watered down to get a PG-13 rating. “To be truthful to the book, it has to be violent, intense, sad. It has to be a tough watch,” he told SFX magazine (via CinemaBlend). “Whether supporting the war thematics, the financial nihilism thematics, or the anti-violence thematics, it has to retain that intensity.”
The Long Walk’s screenwriter will put another kid in danger in his next Stephen King adaptation
Like director Francis Lawrence, screenwriter J.T. Mollner has considerable experience scripting on-screen violence. He’s the writer-director behind the twisty, eye-popping 2024 thriller “Strange Darling,” a Willa Fitzgerald-starring movie you need to check out if you haven’t yet. It’s about a serial killer, a cat-and-mouse chase through the woods, and a woman who encounters a foe she might not be prepared for, and the movie doesn’t shy away from showing the brutality of gun violence.
Speaking with CinemaBlend, Mollner revealed that he signed onto “The Long Walk” in part because Stephen King and Lawrence were committed to a violent film. “[Lawrence] knew that meant it was gonna be a very hardcore, disturbing and somewhat controversial movie,” Mollner said. “And that’s the movie I was interested in writing … We didn’t really pull any punches.”
Mollner is a self-described King fan, so other King devotees will be happy to hear that Mollner’s next project is yet another King adaptation; furthermore, it’s one that will once again put a young person in mortal danger. He’ll write and direct “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,” an adaptation of the 1999 King novel about a young girl lost in the woods. Lionsgate president Erin Westerman said in a statement to The Wrap, “Throughout his work, [Mollner] creates characters, and especially young characters, that are so compelling, heartbreaking and emotional that they pop off the screen.”
