It's been over half a year now since we brought you news that The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence is set to helm an adaptation of Stephen King's The Long Walk. Now, following hot on the heels of last week's announcement that Lawrence is set to direct Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes sequel Sunrise On The Reaping, we're learning more about the busy filmmaker's King-related plans. According to Deadline, Licorice Pizza star Cooper Hoffman and Rye Lane breakout David Jonsson are both in talks to lead Lionsgate's long-gestating adaptation.
Originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym in 1979, King's dystopian doorstop takes place in a world where 100 teenage boys — including sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty —take part in the annual "Long Walk" competition. This particular long walk has three simple yet brutal rules: the boys must maintain a speed above 4 miles per hour; if they receive three warnings in an hour, then they get shot dead; and the last one walking gets whatever he wants for the rest of his life. It's a sort of Hunger Games-meets-Squid Game via Duke of Edinburgh type nightmare, and a concept well within Games veteran Lawrence's genre wheelhouse.
Having slipped through the fingers of filmmakers like George A. Romero, Frank Darabont, and André Øvredal over the years, a feature adaptation of The Long Walk has, perhaps aptly, taken a long time to finally come to fruition. And though we don't have any idea when this one will start shooting yet, let alone actually hit our screens, Lawrence's involvement and the mooted attachment of two of Hollywood's brightest young talents have us hopeful that The Long Walk is finally only a short distance away. And until we do hear more, we can at least look forward to seeing Jonsson in Fede Alvarez' Alien: Romulus, whose 16 August release is getting closer by the minute!