Summary
- Stephen King’s upcoming adaptation, The Long Walk, will appeal to The Walking Dead fans due to shared dystopian settings.
- The Long Walk features relatable characters embarking on unexpected journeys, much like The Walking Dead’s popular characters.
- The Stand by Stephen King, a post-apocalyptic novel, received adaptations and high praise from the author for capturing memorable characters.
Considering how popular the AMC drama The Walking Dead remains to this day, it’s no wonder that equally popular author Stephen King counts himself as a fan. According to Comicbook.com, in 2018, he tweeted a query about how realistic one particular scene was. Viewers have been having fun discussing the best storylines and most perplexing zombie elements for years now, and thankfully, there are several spinoffs for fans to become invested in.
Since King pens sci-fi and horror stories about kids in small towns, that incredibly creepy clown, and other things that go bump in the night, it’s no wonder that some of his work will also appeal to fans of The Walking Dead. There is one upcoming adaptation of a smart and moving Stephen King story that The Walking Dead fans should look forward to.
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The Walking Dead Fans Will Enjoy The Upcoming Stephen King Movie The Long Walk
The Long Walk is a post-apocalyptic story about 50 teenage boys competing as they go for a “Long Walk” and stars Mark Hamill and Judy Greer. With a script by JT Mollner and directed by Francis Lawrence, who is known for directing The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, The Long Walk and The Walking Dead share a dystopian setting. While The Long Walk isn’t about zombies, both stories examine characters dealing with the end of the world as they knew it and wondering where to go.
The Long Walk, which King decided to publish as his pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1979, can be considered a blend of The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games. The Long Walk features characters living under a totalitarian regime and has a similar bleak tone to Suzanne Collins’s story, which has an unsettling atmosphere of several areas including The Capitol and the mysterious District 13. The Long Walk and The Hunger Games are both popular competitions that put young people in unnerving and dangerous situations. They also serve as entertainment for the rest of the population.
While Negan Smith (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is a uniquely terrifying The Walking Dead villain, fans also appreciate the AMC drama because of likable and relatable characters like Rick Grimes. If every character was as evil as Negan, the show would feel disappointing and one-note. Instead, the layered characters make every episode appealing and hard to stop watching. In The Long Walk, the main character Raymond Davis ‘Ray’ Garraty is a teenage boy who audiences can connect with. Both Rick and Ray go on journeys that they never thought they would, and their adventures are fascinating to follow along with.
Stephen King’s The Long Walk has been in Hollywood for several years now. In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter reported that New Line was adapting the novel with a script from James Vanderbilt, who co-wrote the successful horror movies Scream (2022) and Scream 6. Then, in November 2023, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Lionsgate was going to make the film adaptation of The Long Walk. According to The Long Walk‘s IMDb page, the film also includes Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Roman Griffin Davis. While The Walking Dead fans will be interested in the story, horror fans will also enjoy seeing Judy Greer as she played Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) daughter Karen Nelson in David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy.
What Other Stephen King Stories Are Post-Apocalyptic?
Stephen King’s 1978 novel The Stand is set in a dystopian world and got two adaptations: a movie in 1994 and a CBS miniseries that aired in 2020. The characters are living in a world with a deadly flu that everyone calls Captain Trips, and it’s one of his most well-known and popular books.
King was a fan of The Stand miniseries and had only positive things to say about it when he spoke to Entertainment Weekly. He said:
“Obviously, they’ve updated it. So there are cell phones, for one thing, and the technology has changed and they’ve changed some of the story. But the characters are terrific. Everybody is really good. I don’t think anybody can top Gary Sinise as Stu Redmond. But Alexander Skarsgard is a good Randall Flagg, he just knocked it out of the park. It’s big, let’s put it that way.”
While Under The Dome isn’t about the apocalypse, the 2009 novel and CBS TV series is about a world that is very different and also terrifying. The residents of Chester’s Mill are shocked to find that a strange dome has formed over their small town, and they try to figure out why it’s there and where it came from.
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