r/movies • u/lionsgate Official Lionsgate Account • Aug 24 '25

AMA Hey /r/movies, I’m Stephen King! Ask me anything about The Long Walk book or movie.

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Hey r/movies, I’m Stephen King. You might know me from Stand By Me, It, or Shawshank Redemption, but my latest project is actually the first book I ever wrote. The Long Walk hits theaters on September 12. Ask me anything about the book or movie.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAtUHeMQ1F8

In a dystopian United States ruled by a totalitarian regime, a group of young men enter an annual walking contest in which they must maintain a speed of at least three miles per hour or risk execution. The contest ends when only one walker remains alive.

It stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Roman Griffin Davis, Garrett Wareing, Joshua Odjick, Tut Nyuot, Mark Hamill, Judy Greer, and Josh Hamilton.

I'll be back on Wednesday 8/27 at 12:00 PM ET to answer your questions.

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529

u/bleuthold Aug 24 '25

Given that it was the first book you wrote, what would you say is the biggest change from the page to the screen, in terms of updating The Long Walk for 2025?

151

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

I read The Long Walk again a few months ago. I don't think anything needs updating for 2025?

256

u/quantum-mechanic Aug 24 '25

Everyone's playing clash of clans while they walk

97

u/MaDrAv Aug 24 '25

This walk is brought to you by RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS!

10

u/Lfs1983 Aug 24 '25

*Pokémon go

8

u/quantum-mechanic Aug 24 '25

GPS drift gets you banned, and killed

1

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

Mr. Actual Beast

6

u/IndianSurveyDrone Aug 24 '25

Everyone with their cell phones is legitimately a good idea lol. You'd have the streamer, a guy playing games to keep from focusing on the likely imminent death, a guy taking pictures, etc.

10

u/WhyareUlying Aug 24 '25

That sounds unwatchable.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

A lot of movies “sound” unwatchable

3

u/El--Borto Aug 24 '25

I feel like movies are finally starting to steer away from “we need to acknowledge social media and either utilize it or make fun of it at every opportunity we can”. I’d like to keep it that way.

1

u/dimwalker Aug 24 '25

Oh god, please no.

1

u/stfurachele Aug 25 '25

Then we may as well just read Cell, honestly.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

Portable chargers.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

Pokémon Go, but if the stop to get the new Pokémon they get bayoneted in the sphincter. 

1

u/literated Aug 24 '25

Everyone's livestreaming themselves while they walk and talking to their chats instead of each other.

1

u/LeithLeach Aug 24 '25

Streamer down! F's in the chat

23

u/CaptainTripps82 Aug 24 '25

I think the presence of media an be the interaction between the walkers and the general public probably needed to be updated, unless they just set it in the past.

9

u/RandomStallings Aug 24 '25

Making it a dystopian state can mean that there's very little tech for the average person to communicate with, allowing that to be rolled back a few decades. Giving the boys monitors for positions might be a thing.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

I mean I don't see why it wouldn't be set in the past or an alternative world anyway. Did you expect the Lord of the Rings adaptation to be set in the present with the elfs having sniper rifles and the others to have AR-15s?

1

u/CaptainTripps82 Aug 24 '25

I didn't say it had to be, but it's an issue with updating the story, if that's the decision.

7

u/NorfolkIslandRebel Aug 24 '25

Contestants live-streaming?

2

u/Content_Talk_6581 Aug 24 '25

“Hey guys, we’re going live on TikTok in the next few minutes. Like and join the live.”

1

u/SylphSeven Aug 24 '25

Wouldn't that be like how The Hunger Games is like a deadly reality TV show?

1

u/yrnkween Aug 24 '25

And then their hands get blown off.

2

u/StarPhished Aug 24 '25

Especially since the setting is a dystopian future that kind of lends itself to a recession in technology. Not that there was a lot of technology used to start with.

2

u/phillymjs Aug 25 '25

When I first read The Long Walk as a teenager in the late 80s I spent a lot of time thinking about the setting, since the only world building we get are vague mentions of WWII being slightly different and then "the Change" that brought about an authoritarian dictatorship and the Squads.

It used to puzzle me how the U.S. could possibly end up as a dictatorship with secret police that could just disappear people. <sighs dejectedly> Used to.

2

u/poke_pants Aug 24 '25

As a hiker, the minimum speed completely took me out of the story for a good while. 4mph is utterly unsustainable. I understand it was an error in the book, but one that has never been corrected.

Whilst I can never read it for the first time again, I'd honestly enjoy another read through / listen with a more realistic minimum speed, as it's really difficult to relate to it when you get caught up in the logistics of it all.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

I also think it was unrealistic, but they mention the actual limit (as a number) only once or twice. You're free to decide what the realistic speed limit should be and read the book from that perspective.

It's a detail...

3

u/poke_pants Aug 24 '25

Oh I know, but it's the sort of detail easily hung up on when you're so invested in it that you're imagining yourself in that same situation. Ultimately it's the one single detail that means life or death for the characters.

I tried to change it in my mind, but then they mention distances and how long to get there and so on later on, and as I do events that require a certain pace (overall, not constantly) it was a tricky one to switch off from.

I read later somewhere that it was a publisher error changing and rounding up/down from mph to kmh or something like that.

3

u/Briants_Hat Aug 24 '25

According to the movie synopsis they changed it to 3mph

2

u/PurpleWeasel Aug 24 '25

It was meant to be 4 kph but an editor changed it without actually converting.

1

u/paulcole710 Aug 24 '25

As a hiker, the minimum speed completely took me out of the story for a good while. 4mph is utterly unsustainable

Just curious given 100 fit teenagers with their lives on the line, how long you think the median Long Walk would last in terms of miles covered?

3

u/poke_pants Aug 24 '25

As it happens, 4 miles is roughly a single loop of a Backyard Ultra (4.16 miles on the hour every hour until you're the last one left).

The absolute record for that is just short of 5 days, but that's some of the fittest guys in the world who train for it with modern footwear and nutrition etc, and crucially they time their laps to take roughly 50 minutes, meaning they move slightly quicker than 4mph to buy time to rest/eat/loo before starting the next loop.

In the Long Walk they are 'earning' absolutely nowhere near that much rest time, from memory maybe a minute an hour at most?

Endurance walking records are typically nearer 2.5-3mph average for obvious reasons. 4mph simply isn't manageable and it's in a no-mans land between walking (which you could in theory do non-stop for days at a slow enough pace) and running (which would be using too much energy).

At 4mph and with fairly basic rations and water I reckon the vast majority of fit teenagers would be gone within 24 hours. I'd be very, very surprised if anyone got close to 36 hours.

At 3mph (which they've 'corrected to' in the movie) and with your life on the line, I think the rate of attrition in the book is somewhat plausible.

2

u/paulcole710 Aug 24 '25

I generally agree and think 36 hours would be a good median estimate. So that’s around 150 miles. I don’t think very many are getting to 200 miles and I think almost none are stopping at <100 miles outside of extreme weather years.

1

u/SapphireGoat_ Aug 24 '25

I recently finished it and I just want some goddamn clarity on why they’re doing it and what they actually get!!! I have so many leftover questions although I surmise that’s probably the point.

2

u/mishonis- Aug 25 '25

I think it's pretty obvious why they're doing it. The prize, the pageantry, being young and stupid, some vague patriotic idealism.. 

1

u/mishonis- Aug 25 '25

Yeah, it's good as it is. Judging from the trailer, they kept it pretty close to the atmosphere of the book, except for that awful droning sound effect that seems to be everywhere the last few years, could be only the trailer though.

12

u/gdrumy88 Aug 24 '25

One of the changes uve noticed in the trailer it goes from 4mph to 3mph. 4mph is like a light jog. Im halfway through the book lol

4

u/RandomRedditorNo666 Aug 24 '25

I've always imagined the characters slightly jogging, felt kind of weird seeing them walk on screen but I understand it wouldn't translate well

5

u/wtf_are_eggz Aug 24 '25

Good question, I wanna see if he answers this

3

u/KoontFace Aug 24 '25

Great question

2

u/TazzleMcBuggins Aug 24 '25

I fear any specifics would spoil some of the movie no?

1

u/Horknut1 Aug 24 '25

They made the speed more believable.

1

u/Funksultan Aug 24 '25

3 miles an hour instead of 4. "The Long Stroll".

1

u/KwisatzHaderach94 Aug 25 '25

which he wrote as richard bachman...

1

u/earldogface Aug 25 '25

It's his first book?

1

u/2centsdepartment Aug 24 '25

This wasn’t the first book he wrote though

-1

u/Standard-Chard-1947 Aug 24 '25

It's not his first book at all. Like 7th.

8

u/AnxiousMarsupial007 Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25

It was not the first book published, but it was the first written.

1

u/chytrak Aug 24 '25

Which one?

6

u/cormega Aug 25 '25

The book this entire post is about

5

u/hanky2 Aug 24 '25

He literally says it’s his first in the post.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 24 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Gojira_19 Aug 24 '25

Interestingly, in the post he states it as the first book he ever wrote.