Lionsgate is marking its territory in next year’s horror calendar, officially dating The Long Walk—a dystopian thriller based on Stephen King’s 1979 novel—for September 12, 2025. The release date places it just one week after New Line’s The Conjuring: Last Rites, setting up a horror-heavy post-Labor Day stretch in theaters.
Unveiled this morning during Lionsgate’s CinemaCon presentation, the film’s first trailer played exclusively for attendees. Directed by The Hunger Games veteran Francis Lawrence, The Long Walk is a tonal departure from the studio’s typical horror slate. Instead of jump scares, the film leans into psychological dread and a bleak survivalist premise.
“This is my favorite Stephen King novel,” said Lawrence onstage at CinemaCon. “It’s not about knocking each other out—it’s about how we hold each other up. That’s what got me.”
The story follows 100 teenage boys forced to participate in an annual death march where they must maintain a walking speed above 4 mph or face execution. The last boy standing is granted anything he desires for the rest of his life. The King novel—written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman—blends dystopia with the emotional depth of his classic coming-of-age stories like Stand by Me and It.
The cast includes Cooper Hoffman, Charlie Plummer, Judy Greer, David Jonsson, and Mark Hamill, who plays the film’s ominous antagonist. In the trailer, Hamill delivers a chilling line while firing the starting gun: “Walk until there is only one of you left.”
Hamill described the novel as “nightmare-inducing” and relished his villainous role. “If you can’t be the hero, there’s nothing better than being the villain,” he joked during his first-ever CinemaCon appearance.
The preview paints a brutal portrait of comradeship turned tragedy. Boys walk and joke along dusty roads, flanked by tanks and watched by faceless enforcers. As friends fall—some suddenly, others heartbreakingly—the horror is not in what’s lurking around the corner, but in the rules themselves.
The Long Walk arrives amid a changing theatrical landscape. Once wary of releasing similar genre films close together, studios now seem eager to stack the schedule. Just this past weekend, Blumhouse/Universal’s A Woman in the Yard and A24’s Death of a Unicorn opened side by side.
But Lionsgate is betting that audiences will respond to this deeper, more character-driven horror offering, especially one rooted in the iconic and ever-relevant work of Stephen King.
Sources:
Deadline, Variety, CinemaCon Coverage 2025
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