The Long Walk by name, The Long Walk by nature. Ahead of the new movie’s release in cinemas, actor David Jonsson has revealed just how far the cast had to trek each day on set.
Directed by Francis Lawrence, the film started its life as a novel written by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman about a deadly competition: in a dystopian America, a group of young men must walk at a pace of no less than 3mph.
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If they stop, they die, and the annual contest only ends when one man is left. The Long Walk is truly one of the best movies of 2025, with our five-star review describing it as “harrowing, heartbreaking, and near-flawless.”
While a viral treadmill challenge stunt saw movie-goers walking for the entirety of the movie’s runtime (108 minutes) last month, that was nothing compared to what the actual cast had to do.
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The Long Walk cast had to walk for miles on set each day
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Jonsson – who plays Peter McVries – says the cast who played characters in the contest walked “15 miles some days, some days were like 32” on The Long Walk set.
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To put that in perspective, a marathon is 26 miles. And these actors weren’t just walking once – they were doing it over and over again, day after day, to bring King’s grueling story to life.
That might sound tiring to most, but Judy Greer – who plays Raymond’s (Cooper Hoffman) mother, Mrs. Garraty – was actually jealous. “I’m a big walker, I really love it and they all lost weight and I was jealous about that,” she joked.
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“Breathing fresh air and people handing them Gatorades – when I’m walking by myself in the heat, no one’s handing me anything.”
As for Cooper Hoffman, the fact that the movie has taken this long to make (the novel was published in 1979) was a challenge he was excited about.
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“When they tell you that a movie’s never been done like this, when they tell you this movie’s been very hard to make, the competitive side of me wants to make it,” he told the outlet.
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Star Wars icon Mark Hamill also appears in The Long Walk, playing the competition’s brutal enforcer, The Major. Initially, he didn’t want to take part in the film and was “totally repelled”, until he read King’s book.
“I said, ‘I’m not doing this, it’s way too violent, I hate it.’ And then I ordered the book and was like, ‘Oh, it’s just the premise that’s ghastly’; it’s an attention grabber to get to the real heart and soul of the movie which is the experiences of these young walkers,” he said.
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“And that’s where the heart [is], their experiences are incredible – the friendships, the rivalries, it’s fantastic. It really belongs to the walkers, I’m just a guy you love to hate.”
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The Long Walk lands in cinemas on September 12. Find out when to expect it on streaming, the ‘hardest part’ of the viral treadmill challenge, what’s coming up in our 2025 movies release calendar.
