“The Long Walk” Trailer #2: A Death Sentence at 3 MPH
I don't know about you, but if I hear a character say “I have everything to gain” in a trailer these days, my stomach tightens. That's never a good sign. Not in this genre. Not in this economy. Especially not in The Long Walk — a movie that doesn't just flirt with death, it speed dates it at exactly three miles per hour.
Lionsgate just dropped Trailer #2 for The Long Walk, and… yeah. This thing's got teeth. Adapted from Stephen King's first-written novel—yes, the one he originally buried under the pseudonym Richard Bachman because it was “too bleak” for publishers—this new film is a powder keg of teen desperation, fascist horror, and oxygen-sucking tension. It's Battle Royale in slow motion. With blisters.
Directed by Francis Lawrence (the guy who gave us Catching Fire, I Am Legend, and more recently The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), the film premieres September 12, 2025, and if this trailer's any indication… it's not here to coddle.
A Game of Footsteps and Finality
Let's get the setup straight: 100 boys. One walk. Keep a pace of three miles per hour or die. No finish line. No bathroom breaks. No mercy. Three warnings and — bang — you're done.
It's the kind of concept that feels too cruel to be fiction, until you remember the world we live in and think, “Yeah, we're about five clicks away from this being televised.”
Cooper Hoffman, fresh off his quietly remarkable work in Licorice Pizza and Saturday Night, steps into the lead here — and honestly? He looks wrecked. In the right way. Gaunt, frightened, trying to stand tall but buckling under the strain of whatever awful thing happened five minutes before the trailer cuts in.
Also along for the march: David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, and Mark Hamill, who appears in the trailer like a shadow that's seen too much and can't forget any of it.
Dystopia Feels Personal Here
This isn't some slick, chrome-plated Hunger Games variant. It's sweaty. Muddy. Exhausted. JT Mollner's script pulls King's retro-angst into a world that eerily resembles now — complete with militarized police, state-mandated sacrifice, and the illusion of choice. It's a future America you'd expect to find in a Cormac McCarthy fever dream. Or, let's be honest, next year's news cycle.
Francis Lawrence isn't new to pain-stained youth narratives, but The Long Walk feels like it's straining at the edges of his usual style. It's meaner. Sharper. Less spectacle, more soul rot. Even the cinematography (that dry, gray daylight where hope goes to die) looks like a warning.
Trailer #2 gives us just enough to feel the psychological collapse ticking underneath every bootstep. There's a boy screaming. Another just… lies down. Mark Hamill stares into nothing. And somewhere, someone says, “I'm going to win.” But you can hear it in their voice — they know that's a lie.
So, Is It Going to Work?
Here's the thing: Stephen King didn't think this book was “ready” when he wrote it. He shelved it. Too nihilistic. Too hopeless. Too real.
That's what makes this adaptation so timely.
We're no longer asking “How could this happen?” We're asking “When?”
And maybe that's the point. The Long Walk doesn't need monsters or haunted hotels. It's just kids, walking toward death, because the system told them it was an honor. It's terrifying not because it's fiction — but because it feels inevitable.
Mark your calendars: September 12, 2025. That's when the walk begins.
