Stephen King’s classic novel “Death March” (“The Long Walk” in the original) is certainly aimed at young readers, but it still offers one of the nastiest premises in the horror pope’s work, which has no shortage of nasty premises: Set in a dystopian future, a particularly treacherous competition is held every year where 100 teenagers simply have to run for as long as they can without taking a break. Anyone moving at a speed of less than four miles (about 6.4 km/h) for more than 30 seconds will be given a warning and after three warnings will be shot. The last person standing will receive a huge sum of money and a prize of their choice.
Sounds a bit like a precursor to the Hunger Games? Apparently the film rights holders of ‘Death March’ thought so too and now have a director Francis Laurens tasked with adapting the dark story. The filmmaker personally announced this in an interview with the website . Lawrence is known for directing four of the five Hunger Games films. His latest franchise entry, the prequel “The Hunger Games – The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes,” is currently successfully playing in theaters. So if anyone knows how to send teenagers into a fight for survival, it’s him.
After 35 years: will the movie ‘Death March’ really happen?
‘Death March’ therefore also occupies a special place in the work of Stephen King Strictly speaking, it was the first novel the author wrote, even though he didn’t release it until 1979 (after his official debut “Carrie”) under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. Plus, it’s one of the few very well-known King stories that hasn’t been made into a movie yet – but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t already been tried.
In fact, attempts to adapt it have been made for 35 years, but always without success. Zombie guru George A. Romero was supposed to do it back in 1988, but in the end it never happened. In 2007, “Walking Dead” creator and King expert Frank Darabont (“The Condemned,” “The Green Mile,” “The Fog”) secured the film rights — which then became available again after years of delays in the project. There was also no progress under ‘The Last Voyage Of The Demeter’ creator André Øvredal, who was announced as director in 2019 – so a replacement has now been found.
We can only hope that things will really work out with Francis Lawrence at the helm. Lawrence himself was very euphoric in an interview with Business Insider, but he is already busy in the near future. He is currently working on a film adaptation of the video game hit “BioShock” and the highly anticipated sequel “Constantine 2”. It is also quite conceivable that he will return to the director’s chair for a possible sequel to ‘Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes’. So anyone who wants to finally see a ‘Death March’ adaptation will have to keep their fingers crossed, despite the move now apparently coming back to the project.