Mark Hamill is to join the in-the-works adaption of Richard Bachman’s novel The Long Walk.
Bachman is the pen name of Stephen King, who wrote several books under this pseudonym earlier in his career including Rage (1977), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982).
The Running Man was famously adapted into the 1987 Schwarzenegger movie that shared very little in common with the actual book. A more faithful adaption of that novel is in development from Edgar Wright.
The Long Walk will be directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games, I Am Legend).
It tells the story of a dystopian America of the near future that is entertained by the Long Walk. This is a televised competition in which unruly teenage boys walk without rest. Each competitor must keep walking faster than four miles per hour or risk being eliminated, literally, by sadistic guards and supervisors.
They follow U.S. Route 1. If a Walker drops below the required speed for 30 seconds, he gets a warning. A Walker can lose a warning if he walks for an hour without getting another warning. If a Walker gets three warnings and continues to lag behind for 30 seconds, he is shot. The last surviving Walker earns a large sum of money and a “Prize” of his choice.
Hamill has joined alongside Judy Greer. The rest of the cast so far are Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Roman Griffin Davis.
The Long Walk as one of the 100 best books for teenage readers published between 1966 and 2000. While not the first of King’s novels to be published, it was the first novel he wrote, having begun it in 1966–67 during his freshman year at the University of Maine, some eight years before his first published novel, Carrie, was released in 1974.
This is Hamill’s second recent King adaptation following his role in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.