Legendary Stephen King Book Finally Being Turned Into Movie After 46 Years—Watch the Trailer

Mark Hamill, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are about to take a long walk.

Stephen King’s classic 1979 horror novel The Long Walk, which somehow has not been made into a movie yet, is finally hitting the big screen this September.

The plot focuses on a game show in a future, dystopian America entitled The Long Walk—similar to another Stephen King novel, The Running Man—where fifty teenage boys walk along U.S. Route 1 without rest. Each boy must walk three miles an hour without stopping, or a nearby U.S. Army soldier will execute him on the spot. After every other contestant has been eliminated, the last teen standing gets one wish for anything he desires. It is the first novel Stephen King ever wrote.

Cooper Hoffman, son of legendary actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, will play protagonist Ray Garraty. Garraty joins the walk for unknown, mysterious reasons after the death of his father, and befriends fellow contestant Peter McVries (David Jonsson, from HBO’s Industry) along their journey. During their walk, an enigmatic military leader known only as The Major (Mark Hamill) oversees the show to make sure everything runs smoothly.

The film will be directed by Francis Lawrence, who directed every Hunger Games film besides the first.

It’s surprising that an adaptation of The Long Walk is finally coming. Frank Darabont, a self-professed King superfan and director of many classics like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, bought the rights to the novel over 20 years ago and promised he’d eventually make the movie. Obviously, that didn’t pan out, so it’s nice that one of King’s most famous stories will finally make it to the big screen.

The Long Walk will be in theaters on September 12.