Another Stephen King book, The Long Walk, is gearing up for release. Starring David Jonsson (Industry), Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends), Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete), and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), the dystopian horror thriller film has many shocks and horrors. (Also read: Sydney Sweeney refuses to comment on her controversial jeans ad as she promotes her new film at Toronto Film Festival)

About the film

But the author had a condition for this adaptation, given that the film showed the violence that takes place as a totalitarian regime forces a group of young men to enter an annual walking contest in which they must maintain a speed of at least three miles per hour or risk execution. He shared that with director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner.

What Stephen King said

Speaking to The Times UK, Stephen explained his choice and said, “If you look at these superhero movies, you’ll see some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks but you never see any blood. And man, that’s wrong. It’s almost, like, pornographic… I said [for The Long Walk], if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”

Mollner added, “Even though he was writing about specific things at the time, I feel that relevance is generational and wanted to make sure we had that. The beauty, love and the story of friendship along with the brutality of hopelessness and terror. We wanted to go all the way. I knew that Stephen King wanted us to go all the way. I knew Lionsgate wanted us to go all the way. If this book got into the wrong hands, studio or filmmakers. It could’ve been neutered. So, I’m very grateful we were able to keep the teeth that the book has.”

The Long Walk is set to release in theatres on September 12.