Richard Bachman is a popular guy. Two of his books are getting high-profile adaptations this year. Of course, Richard Bachman is the pseudonym of the great Stephen King, and the movies coming our way are Edgar Wright’s The Running Man starring Glen Powell, and The Long Walk from director Francis Lawrence, hitting theaters on September 12th.
Vanity Fair has dropped the first images from The Long Walk, based on the 1979 book and the first King ever wrote at the age of 19. The story, set in a dystopian future version of the United States, follows a group of contestants in a grueling annual walking contest where they must never drop below a certain pace or face elimination.
King said, “You write from your times, so certainly, that was in my mind. But I never thought about it consciously. I was writing a kind of a brutal thing. It was hopeless, and just what you write when you’re 19 years old, man. You’re full of beans and you’re full of cynicism, and that’s the way it was.”
The film will be Lawrence’s next before tackling The Hunger Games: Sunrise On the Reaping.
The Long Walk has a script by JT Mollner, and the cast is stacked with young stars on the rise. Cooper Hoffman (Saturday Night), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Garrett Wareing (God Is A Bullet), Charlie Plummer (The Return), Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends), and Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbitt) are joined by Judy Greer (Jawbreaker) and some guy named Mark Hamill.
