Summary
- The Long Walk’s release date is set for September 12, 2025, during the fall movie season.
- The movie features a dark and sinister competition similar to The Hunger Games.
- The film stars Mark Hamill as a villain and is directed by Francis Lawrence.
Stephen King is a name synonymous with horror. His writing has been adapted for the big and small screen for decades, to varying degrees of success. However, King also wrote much darker stories under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Now, one of “Bachman’s” books, The Long Walk, is heading to theaters, and it officially has a release date.
The Long Walk‘s release date places it firmly in the fall movie season, when theatergoers may be looking for spookier and more terrifying movies to enjoy. The Long Walk‘s apocalyptic story about a sinister competition will likely resonate with fans of The Hunger Games, and it’s even brought on that franchise’s director, Francis Lawrence.
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The Long Walk’s Release Date Will Be September 12, 2025
Per Deadline, Lionsgate announced The Long Walk‘s release date as September 12th, and presented a trailer at CinemaCon, where Lawrence and star Mark Hamill were in attendance. The footage showed a villainous Hamill, who may never play the Joker again, but can still be a great bad guy, firing the starting pistol to begin the grueling competition, in which 100 boys are forced to walk as far as they can without ever stopping. Those who go too slow or can’t keep moving forward are killed. “There’s one winner and no finish line,” Hamill says in The Long Walk‘s trailer. The star, who has played both heroes and villains, seemed to relish the idea of returning to the dark side (since he might also not be playing Luke Skywalker anymore), saying “If you can’t be the hero, there’s nothing better than being the villain.” Also starring in the movie are Judy Greer, Cooper Hoffman, Charlie Plummer, and David Jonsson.
Francis Lawrence, who has more than enough familiarity with directing movies about children in deadly competitions, expressed his excitement at helming the Stephen King adaptation, citing it as his favorite book by the author. “For me, it was the conceit that was very interesting,” Lawrence said, “You can imagine yourself in the shoes of these young men.” The Long Walk is definitely a harrowing story, one in which the spirits of the main characters are slowly broken down, as they are forced to keep moving despite their growing fatigue and disillusionment. The novel was released under King’s pseudonym, and as the author noted in the afterword to his short story collection Full Dark, No Stars, it was actually the first book he ever wrote.
Oddly enough, The Long Walk will not be the only Stephen King/Richard Bachman adaptation released this year, as Edgar Wright’s take on The Running Man is scheduled for a November 21, 2025 release. That story also coincidentally involves a futuristic competition, in which one man is hunted for entertainment, but can win money by surviving. Originally adapted to the screen in 1987, Wright’s new take promises to be closer to the source material, with Glen Powell stepping into the lead role Also due out this year is The Life of Chuck, which will see director Mike Flanagan taking his latest stab at the works of King after Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. Far from being a horror movie, The Life of Chuck, based on one of King’s short stories, is a far more existential tale that examines the life of one man and how it ripples outward through the universe. Needless to say, this is shaping up to a be a big year for Stephen King fans.
The Long Walk will premiere in theaters on September 12, 2025.
The Long Walk
- Release Date
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September 12, 2025
- Director
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Francis Lawrence
- Writers
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J.T. Mollner
- Producers
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Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, Francis Lawrence, Cameron MacConomy