First Look at Stephen King’s ‘The Long Walk’: The Dystopian Coming-of-Age Story He Considered Too “Merciless” to Film

McVries has a lean physique, ripped arms, and an indefatigable presence, but the actor’s preparation for the role went beyond making sure he didn’t skip leg day. “Francis told me to read some William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience,” Jonsson says. “That really reminded me of their relationship, this kind of yin and yang of who we are to be human. What McVries lacks, Garrity has. What Garrity has, McVries lacks.”

Together, they might be unstoppable. But only one can win.

The Long Walk itself was all too often halted in its tracks over the years, both as a book and as an attempted movie. It was the first of five finished novels to be stashed in King’s desk, unwanted and largely unread, until he finally hit the jackpot with his first published book, Carrie, in 1974. “I was trying to impress a girl that I met, and I gave it to her chapter by chapter,” King says of The Long Walk. “She liked it, and that was cool.” But she didn’t fall for the book tough enough to swoon for him too. “I don’t think that I ever managed to get lucky, but I certainly tried,” he says.

He then submitted the book to a Random House contest for aspiring first-time novelists, hosted annually by the legendary editor Bennett Cerf—known for shepherding the works of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Dr. Seuss, among many others. “Wow, that takes me back,” King says. “But I was depressed to get a form letter back, and I just never sent it anywhere else. Just put it in a drawer.”

Several years after following Carrie with bestsellers like ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand, King considered resurrecting some of his better unpublished books. But his editors in those days worried that King was already too prolific. “Nobody wanted to publish too many books [by one author] at one time because they felt that it would be a drag on the market and people would be overwhelmed,” he says.

So The Long Walk finally hit bookstores in 1979. But it was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which King would employ for five books. He planned to release Misery as a sixth under the bogus name when the ruse was uncovered by a bookstore clerk in 1985. The King revelation turned each of the Bachman books into bestsellers, and The Running Man and Thinner were later adapted into movies.

The Long Walk was repeatedly considered for the huge screen, but each attempt fell apart. Night of the Living Dead’s George Romero gave it a try in the behind schedule ’80s; Frank Darabont, no stranger to King with his adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist, began developing a version in the behind schedule 2000s. More recently in 2019, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark filmmaker André Øvredal was attached to direct. But each time, The Long Walk stumbled in the development process.

“I think maybe what held it back in those other adaptations is that merciless quality,” King says. “Somebody putting down the money for it must’ve been, like, ‘I don’t know…this is hard. This is a painful one.’”

What changed? He isn’t sure. But King is certainly on a sizzling streak these days. In a few weeks, he’ll publish Never Flinch, the latest installment in his Holly Gibney series of detective thrillers; he’s also finishing the third Talisman book now. Oz Perkins just scored a hit with The Monkey, based on King’s brief story about a cursed toy; director Mike Flanagan (currently working on a novel TV series based on Carrie) releases his take on King’s upbeat apocalypse tale The Life of Chuck on June 6, after winning the audience prize at the Toronto International Film Festival last year; Edgar Wright directs Glen Powell in a novel version of The Running Man later this year; and MGM+ is putting the finishing touches on a TV series based on King’s 2019 novel The Institute, about a secret government facility to study children with otherworldly powers, with David E. Kelley writing and producing alongside director Jack Bender of Lost fame.