Everybody has different tolerance levels and expectations from watching a film. There are some who want laughs, romance, and light entertainment… and there are others who love devastating drama and hardcore horror. Understanding where you exist on this scale can greatly enhance your watching habits, but there will always be certain titles that can challenge you. To use an example from the 2025 movie release calendar: do you think you’re ready to stomach the big screen experience of director Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk?
Addressing that question is the main subject of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but it’s not the exclusive subject, as the past few days in the world of Stephen King have also offered us some interesting insight from the author about one of his most beloved works: The Stand. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
The Long Walk Clip Features The Movie’s First Death, And It’s A Good Test To See If You Can Handle The Stephen King Adaptation
While The Long Walk is still a few weeks away from release, one of the most interesting developments in the entertainment world in the last few days has been the hype that has come with the lifting of the film’s embargo on social media reactions. Critics who have attended early screenings have greatly praised the upcoming Stephen King adaptation – and I personally was a voice in that chorus on Tuesday night. I can’t presently say much more about it than what I included in my reaction posts on BlueSky (be on the lookout for my full review here on CinemaBlend at the beginning of next month), but I can emphasize that this is not a movie for the faint of heart – and the first extended clip, which you can watch above, properly illustrates why.
For those of you who are a bit spoiler-phobic and/or haven’t read the book on which the film is based, this clip features the first death in the story – and it’s far from the last. The footage starts out calmly enough, with Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson) meeting Harkness (Jordan Gonzalez), who hopes to write a book about the Long Walk if he survives. The tone changes abruptly when the protagonists hear Curly (Roman Griffin Davis) let out yelps of pain: he has a charley horse, and despite assistance from his fellow competitors, he is unable to maintain a three mile-per-hour pace and faces the devastating consequences.
Knowing that there are even people on the CinemaBlend staff who can’t watch the trailer for The Long Walk without crying, I’d say that this clip provides a terrific litmus test for audiences to see whether or not they have the fortitude that is necessary for the specific cinematic experience that this film offers. A little over a year ago, screenwriter JT Mollner told me that there were no intentions to pull any punches with the adaptation, and this bit of footage is an effective preview. It is not pleasant to see the pain and desperation stretched across Curly’s face as his warnings stack up, and nothing is helped by the fact that the character is played by the wonderful young star of Jojo Rabbit, who specifically captivated audiences in the Taika Waititi movie with his innocence.
When he is ultimately killed for being unable to proceed in the competition, the camera doesn’t pan away, nor does the editing have us experience the moment solely via the reactions of the other characters. Instead, we explicitly see a soldier approach Curly, raise his gun to the boy’s head, and fire a bullet that travels at a downward trajectory to rip open the right side of his face. If you can’t deal with what this clip shows, then you may want to proverbially sit this one out. As graphic and horrific as this moment is, the reality is that it’s the tip of the iceberg as far as extreme content goes.
Based on the first novel that Stephen King ever completed and long thought to be unadaptable both because of its content and structure, The Long Walk is an exceptionally faithful adaptation of its source material that sees 50 teenage boys take part in what is essentially a death march masquerading as a contest. The hope is to be the last participant standing, winning both riches and the ability to make a personal wish – but winning also means witnessing the death of 49 people in your wake.
Do you think you’re ready? I promise you that you are not, but those of you who are nonetheless emotionally fortifying themselves in advance of the movie’s opening weekend are in for an unforgettable film. Also starring Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Mark Hamill and Judy Greer in addition to the aforementioned Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Jordan Gonzalez, and Roman Griffin Davis, The Long Walk will be arriving in theaters everywhere on September 12.
Stephen King Explains Why Has Never Been Happy With The End Of The Stand
The Stand is a special novel in the large expanse of the Stephen King canon for multiple reasons, but one of its most interesting qualities is that it’s a living document of sorts. When the book was first published in 1978, it was a heavily edited incarnation of the story, with about 400 pages cut from the original manuscript due to length – but King got to reintroduce that material when the version dubbed the “Complete and Uncut Edition” hit stores in 1990. The journey not ending there, he crafted a new draft of the apocalyptic tale when he took on teleplay duties for the 1994 miniseries that was directed by Mick Garris, and he wrote an original coda for the streaming limited series that began airing in 2020.
No other King novel has that kind of strange and evolving history – and that fact is made all the more interesting knowing that the author’s acknowledgement that he never been satisfied with the end of The Stand.
The brand new anthology The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand was officially released this past Tuesday (available in hardcover, as an ebook, and on audiobook), and while the tome is generally a must for any Constant Reader, one of its coolest aspects is an introduction that has King looking back at what is arguably his most epic single novel. It begins with him revisiting the book’s final scene with Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith – the former asking if “people ever learn anything,” and the latter replying that she doesn’t know – and he explains that Fran’s struggle to say something more reflected his own when he was writing the scene.
He writes,
I typed Fran saying, ‘I don't know.’ I struggled to say something that would sum up all that had come before and found only empty platitudes. In the end (and at the end), I simply had Fran repeat it as a thought to herself: I don't know. Because I didn't know; that became the truest summation I could manage… I have never been satisfied with that ending.
Going further, he explains that his frustration really only mounted with the Complete and Uncut Edition. As happy as he was about the book being restored to its full scope, he continued to find himself dissatisfied with Fran’s last words and still couldn’t come up with something better.
Stephen King explains that back in the mid-1980s, he had a vision of what Stu and Fran’s future together looked like– the couple making the decision to drive back to Maine, and Fran having her own personal encounter with Randall Flag along the way after falling down a well. But he also knew that he wanted to conclude The Stand with his characters still in Boulder, Colorado, and he eventually got his opportunity to tell that part of the story with the aforementioned coda in the 2020 series:
Between “Frannie in the Well” and Flagg’s final appearance, I even got a chance to address, if tangentially, that troubling ‘I don’t know.’
In some other instances, that may have been closure – but Stephen King says that the opportunity to craft the coda for the streaming series is partially what inspired him to approve The End of the World As We Know It as a concept. He admits that he initially balked at the idea of a collection of stories from different authors set in the canon of The Stand, thinking of it like tribute albums dedicated to artists who have passed on, but getting the chance to expand on his own work made him curious about other tales set in a world that has been ravaged by the horrible pandemic nicknamed Captain Trips.
Edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene, and featuring contributions from talented writers including Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Nat Cassidy, Bev Vincent, Richard Chizmar, Tim Lebbon and Catriona Ward, The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand is now available at retailers everywhere. My copy is in hand, and I’m terrifically excited to dive in.
That brings us to the end of this edition of The King Beat, but news and fun from the world of Stephen King never ceases, and you can be sure that I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column highlighting the biggest headlines.
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