Lionsgate announced that the highly-anticipated film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk will present a panel at Comic-Con this year. The Hall H panel will take place on Friday, July 25 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m.
The panel will be moderated by Eric Vespe and Anthony Breznica, who regularly share their love of all things Stephen King via their The Kingcast podcast. Participants in the panel include stars Mark Hamill (Star Wars, The Fall of the House of Usher), David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Tut Nyuot (The Witcher: Blood Origin), Garrett Wareing (Dead Sea) and Charlie Plummer (The Clovehitch Killer), plus the film’s producer Roy Lee and its screenwriter JT Mollner (both of whom worked on Strange Darling, one of the best horror/thrillers of 2023).
The Long Walk was written by Stephen King under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman, and was first published in 1979. Set in a dystopian future in the United States, it tells the story of an annual walking contest in which 100 young men are tasked with walking until there is only one man standing. Walkers have to stay at a pace of 4 miles per hour or more for the entire walk, and anyone falling below that speed for 30 seconds gets a warning from one of the many soldiers policing the walk. He must then walk an hour with no further penalties in order to have the first one stricken.
Here’s the kicker: three warnings without recovery result in the walker being eliminated via immediate execution. The winner gets to choose anything he wants as his prize.
Though the story is primarily told through the eyes of young Ray Garraty, we also get to know the other walkers. Also playing an integral part in the story is The Major (played by Mark Hamill in the film), who oversees the walk, and is fond of playing mind games with the young men.
The Long Walk was actually Stephen King’s first novel, which he began writing while he was still a college student. The story sat unpublished for years, thus his first published novel was 1974’s Carrie. It was later included in King’s collection of short novels, The Bachman Books, along with Rage, Roadwork and The Running Man (which is receiving a remake that is hopefully truer to King’s original story). All four were published under the Bachman pseudonym before the public caught on.