Stephen King had “brutal” demand for The Long Walk and he made one big change

The Long Walk is among the most heartwrenching stories Stephen King has ever written – and he had one condition for the movie adaptation.

The new film, directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games franchise) and written by JT Mollner (Strange Darling), takes place in a dystopian version of the US, where a group of young men enter a contest that requires them to walk faster than 3mph at all times.

The competition only ends when there’s one man left standing, and those who dip under the pace or stop don’t get to go home: they’re executed as the others walk away.

King has been notoriously critical of movies based on his works, so he wanted to make one thing clear to the makers of The Long Walk: it needed to be “brutal.”

Stephen King requested important change in The Long Walk movie

Lionsgate

Speaking to The Times, King explained how the movie follows “the same sort of kids that are pulled into the war machine” (crucially, he wrote it while young men were being sent to Vietnam).

“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,” he continued.

“I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”

While there aren’t any full reviews yet, early reactions have noted how “heartbreaking” and “nihilistic” it is, with one social media post praising it for turning “a brutal premise into something deeply emotional and unforgettable.”

King wasn’t completely ruthless, though. In the original book, the boys need to walk at a speed of at least 4mph. In hindsight, the author has admitted that’s a bit quick.

“Stephen only had one note from when we gave him the script,” producer Roy Lee told ScreenRant.

“He’s like, ‘Can you change it from four miles per hour to three?’ Because that’s what was written in the book.

“He goes, ‘There’s no way that you could walk four 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.'”

Ahead of the movie’s release on September 12, a “treadmill elimination event” forced The Long Walk viewers to walk for the whole movie, or risk being escorted out of the theater.