Announced this past May, New Line is bringing Stephen King‘s novel The Long Walk to the big screen, with André Øvredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) tapped to direct the adaptation. First published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Long Walk is set in future dystopian America ruled by an authoritarian.
In the terrifying tale, “The country holds an annual walking contest in which 100 teens must journey, non-stop and under strict rules (you stop… you die), until only one of them is still standing alive and receiving a prize. The story told of a 16-year old walker named Raymond Garraty and the teens, some good, some bad, some mysterious, in his orbit.”
Speaking with Rue Morgue, Øvredal teased his “claustrophobic” adaptation of the novel.
“In a way, the book is about the long walk of life,” Øvredal told the site. “You watch your family and friends die around you as you go through life, and there’s a human connection there to the horror these kids are experiencing that goes way beyond the smaller story going on right in front of you. As a director, it’s extremely inspiring to be able to tell a story that is so human and so gruesome at the same time. It’s like man vs. the machine in a way, and about the innocence of these boys and how they don’t really grasp what they’ve gotten themselves into until it’s way too late.”
He continued, “It’ll be very claustrophobic, because we never leave that road. I think the studio and producers really liked my work on The Autopsy of Jane Doe, and compared it to this, because it’s very intimate. You’re walking right there with these kids; the fact that it has an expansive nature around it, as opposed to just walls, is a variation, but it’s going to be an extremely claustrophobic movie.”
