The Long Walk: Stephen King Wanted Teens to Get Brutally Shot in Adaptation

Stephen King told the filmmakers behind the upcoming cinematic adaptation of his book The Long Walk that he wanted the movie to depict teenagers getting shot. King published the dystopian horror novel in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Conversations about a feature-length project based on the book have been going around since the ’80s, but it didn’t materialize until recently.

Stephen King wanted The Long Walk to show its characters getting shot

King spoke about his interaction with director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner about The Long Walk adaptation in a new interview with The Times of London. The popular author revealed that he asked the filmmakers to step away from the desensitized aesthetic of the superhero movies and show characters being shot.

“If you look at these superhero movies, 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,” the writer stated. “I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie,” he added.

This comes after producer Roy Lee told ScreenRant about King’s “one note” on the movie. “He’s like, ‘Can you change it from 4 miles per hour to 3?’ Because that’s what was written in the book,” Lee elaborated. “He goes, ‘There’s no way that you could walk 4 miles an hour for that long.’ That was the only initial note when he gave back. The ending was what it is, and he was like, ‘I love it. But I think you need to reduce the speed,'” Lee further stated.

The Long Walk takes place in a dystopian version of the U.S. where young men take part in an annual walking contest. During the contest, if the participants stop or fail to maintain a minimum speed of 3 miles/hour, they are killed. The cast includes Cooper Hoffman as Raymond Garraty, David Jonsson as Peter McVries, and Garrett Wareing as Stebbins.

The Long Walk Debuts in U.S. theaters on September 12, 2025.

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