Lionsgate debuted the primary trailer at the moment for The Long Walk, an upcoming survival thriller directed by Hunger Games franchise veteran Francis Lawrence and based mostly on the primary novel written by Stephen King (underneath his then-pseudonym Richard Bachman).
The Long Walk is ready in a dystopian near-future the place a gaggle of younger males be a part of a contest to stroll so far as they’ll for so long as they’ll with out stopping. The final one standing wins. What in regards to the ones who can’t maintain strolling? Two warnings are given; the ultimate one is a bullet. No matter the ache, regardless of how grueling the journey, you stroll otherwise you die.
Watch the primary trailer for The Long Walk beneath:
The movie stars Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) as Raymond Garraty and David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) as Peter McVries, whereas Mark Hamill goes to the darkish facet because the sinister Major, chief of the competitors’s army escort. Hoffman is the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who Lawrence directed in three Hunger Games movies.
Here’s what Francis Lawrence informed me this week about bringing The Long Walk – which the director calls “certainly one of my favourite, if not my favourite, Stephen King e book” – to the massive display. (This interview has been edited for brevity and readability.)
From The Hunger Games to The Long Walk
Francis Lawrence: I feel what I actually cherished, and particularly as a result of that is means pre-Hunger Games, was I like the vanity. I feel a part of it’s simply the thought of stroll at a sure tempo and the way lengthy are you able to go with out dipping beneath that pace, and what do you do when you should eat, when you should drink, when you should go to the toilet, and in the midst of the evening if you’re getting drained and dozing off and all of that. I feel when you may have that type of a conceit, you get the viewers to think about themselves within the character’s footwear, no pun supposed, to actually try to think about themselves what it will be like and whether or not or not they may do it.
The factor that I actually love and cherished from the very starting, and that is the factor that I feel this film is de facto about, is the relationships between all these younger males. And it is one factor that basically differentiates from The Hunger Games. Of course, there’s relationships which might be fashioned in these motion pictures too, however this one is de facto in regards to the camaraderie of those boys, and that is the guts and soul of the story of the core ensemble, however actually of McVries and Garraty, the form of two leads of the film. And it was that that basically, actually offered me as a result of they felt like actual grounded, genuine younger males. Stephen King wrote this when he was very, very younger, however these relationships and that dialogue nonetheless holds up at the moment. I feel it is so timeless and the relationships are timeless. I simply discovered it to be a extremely stunning story, which is a bizarre factor to say with how intense it’s and the way violence it’s. I feel it truly is kind of stunning due to the relationships.
How Difficult Is it to Shoot a Movie That’s All Walking All the Time?
Francis Lawrence: We shot this film chronologically and that is not one thing that I’ve ever gotten to do. There’s simply no film that is been in-built a means that form of afforded me that chance. But due to the character of this film, these younger males collect, all of them meet one another, and as soon as they begin strolling, day-after-day, the placement modifications and also you’re in a brand new scene. And so we may select chronologically, and I did fear a little bit bit within the very starting about how I shoot these guys, how I block them, how do you shoot them strolling, speaking, doing all these items. And what I spotted that the vital factor is on this, once more, is the camaraderie, because it’s the guts of the story. … I’ve to actually concentrate on the characters and what the characters are going via bodily, psychologically, emotionally with each other, seeing the degradation over time and over days and after nights and when the group’s whittling away.
Another factor that additionally helps is the change of places [and] what’s the type of climate of the day, which is one thing that we’re very a lot form of on the whim of. If a scene was written as a wet scene however we present up and it is 100 levels out, it now turns right into a scene about sweltering warmth. And that is one other factor that occurs in these sequences. So, you may have this selection: it might be early foggy morning, it might be raining, it might be 100 levels, there might be bugs. There’s all these various things which might be taking place and that make every of the form of scenes and sequences have totally different emotional values. And that is actually what I centered on, versus simply attempting to get fancy with how do I shoot them strolling.
I needed to be actually anchored with the boys, and that meant that we had been at all times transferring with them. So, there’s only a few photographs. There’s some form of establishers which might be form of lengthy lens photographs from a distance, however often we’re proper there in with the boys transferring together with them three miles an hour down stretches of highways and roads and issues like that. So, if you’re doing that and also you’re actually within the combine, there actually is de facto solely a handful of angles that you need to use to convey what we need to convey.
Walk a Mile (or 350) in My Shoes
Francis Lawrence: Physically, it took a toll. I feel someone clocked in that, within the film, they stroll like 336 miles over 4 or 5 days or one thing, and we walked in all probability near 350 miles making the film. I’ll say I feel that was good for the actors and so they actually embraced it. But what was fascinating, and this truly actually mirrors the characters, these are younger males and with not absolutely fashioned frontal cortexes, proper?
So, they arrive in like, “Oh, that is going to be nice. We’re all going to do that film the place we’re strolling, after which we love these characters,” and so they’re all gung ho, identical to all the blokes are in the beginning of the film and the gun goes off, they begin strolling and per week into it, they’re all like, “What the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?”
We’re strolling three quarters of a mile for each soak up sure scenes, after which going again to 1 and doing it once more and doing all of it day, and there have been blisters and sunburns and folks needed to learn to wrap their toes. But if you see some individuals limping, it was as a result of they had been worn out and folks misplaced weight, and it was fairly unbelievable.
Casting Star Wars Hero Mark Hamill as a Stephen King Villain
Francis Lawrence: I’ve been a fan since I used to be a child. I imply, I noticed Star Wars after I was seven, and in order that was simply an enormous film for me. I feel anyone in my era is simply so modified by witnessing the Star Wars motion pictures. So, he is an icon and a legend, however I’ll say it was the later ones. It was the J.J. [Abrams] Star Wars the place I noticed him and I hadn’t seen him in so lengthy, and there was simply this type of weariness to him and a gravitas to him that, fairly actually, I did not know he actually had.
But I did additionally know that he had achieved a ton of voice work, and I do not suppose lots of people actually know the way a lot voice work he is achieved. And he has actual command over dialect and the type of tone and the timbre of his voice and issues like that. And I believed, “God, you recognize, there’d be one thing actually fascinating about him taking part in this half.” Because I did not need to go down the route the place you get some actual army man, often a army advisor and simply sounds official. And I needed someone, once more, with extra complexity that simply had type of a weariness to him, however with gravitas.
He and I had an awesome Zoom [chat] and found that he had, as a child, moved round from army base to army base along with his household, and he knew these guys, these kinds of guys, and so he may simply type of go into this type of mishmash of varied individuals he had met through the years as a baby and type of conjured up his model of the Major. But it was simply improbable to work with him. But I feel it was actually him in J.J.’s film [that] form of shifted my view of the sorts of roles that he may play.
The Long Walk opens in theaters on September twelfth.
