"There's one winner... and no finish line."
Lionsgate has released the first trailer and poster for The Long Walk, a new Stephen King adaptation which is set to hit theaters this September.
This take on King's (penned under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) 1979 dystopian horror tale is helmed by The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, and focuses on a group of young men who sign up for a gruelling annual walking contest - with some lethal rules.
Each contestant must keep his pace above 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h). If a player drops below this speed for 30 seconds for any reason, he gets a warning. If they get three warnings and fails to resume pace after 30 seconds, they are "eliminated."
Star Wars legend Mark Hamill plays the sadistic Major who supervises the contest, and the movie also stars Alien: Romulus’ David Jonsson and Licorice Pizza’s Cooper Hoffman, with Garrett Wareing (Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists), Charlie Plummer (All the Money in the World), Ben Wang (American Born Chinese), Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbit), Joshua Odjick (Wildhood), and Judy Greer (Arrested Development).
A number of other filmmakers were attached to previous versions of The Long Walk over the years, including George A. Romero and Frank Darabont. Lawrence - who counts the book as one of his favorite King stories - tells Collider that his decision to sign on to the project was all about timing.
“It was something that actually crossed my desk years ago, not long after I finished Constantine. It was when I was doing I Am Legend, and I wanted to do it, but Frank Darabont actually scooped up the rights. People have tried to make it over the years, and never could. We just kind of cracked it; I worked with JT Mollner, who did Strange Darling. He wrote a great draft, and it came together really quickly. I had this window, and we hit the right season to shoot it, and we put together an amazing cast. The cast is so good and the performances are great. I'm super happy with it."
Check out the trailer and poster below, and let us know what you think in the comments section.
"From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen King’s first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mockingjay – Pts. 1 & 2 , and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), comes THE LONG WALK, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?"