Francis Lawrence explains why his survival thriller and Stephen King adaptation, The Long Walk, is R-rated. The upcoming dystopian horror movie from The Hunger Games director revolves around an annual ᴅᴇᴀᴅly contest where teens must maintain a minimum walking speed of three miles per hour to avoid being sH๏τ.

In an interview with CinemaBlend, Lawrence clarified why The Long Walk needed to be rated R. The filmmaker stressed that he wasn’t going to hold back from the intensity and violence to capture the degradation in the book. A decision supported by King, Lawrence shared that he wanted to “be truthful” with the source material, warning potential viewers that the movie would be “a tough watch.”

Read Lawrence’s full comments below:

You need to make sure that you really feel the miles and the time. That you feel the degradation emotionally, psychologically, physically. That you feel the weather changes. I wasn’t going to buckle on that. I knew we were making a tough one. It doesn’t deserve to be PG-13; it deserves to be R. Stephen [King] also said it had to be an R.

To be truthful to the book, it has to be violent, intense, sad. It has to be a tough watch. Whether supporting the war thematics, the financial nihilism thematics, or the anti-violence thematics, it has to retain that intensity.

What Being R-Rated Means For The Long Walk

The Long Walk‘s trailer offers a glimpse at some of the gruesome scenes the movie will feature. From the participants being mercilessly executed to someone struggling to walk on a broken ankle, the upcoming survival picture is significantly more explicit and distressful than The Hunger Games.

Published in 1979, King wrote The Long Walk during his high school and early college years. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, where the number of young men being killed was drastically rising, the sci-fi novel about young men voluntarily participating in an annual military contest that sends all but one to their graves ran parallel to what was happening in real life.

Lawrence’s big-screen adaptation, coming to theaters on Sept. 12, will be very faithful to the book. The movie received an R rating for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and Sєxual references. Previously, screenwriter JT Mollner shared that The Long Walk was a pᴀssion project for Lawrence, and King was determined for the I Am Legend filmmaker to make the movie as deeply disturbing as his book.

Our Take On The Long Walk’s Rating

Starring Cooper Hoffman, Ben Wang, David Jonsson, and Mark Hamill, The Long Walk isn’t holding back on its intensity, which is ultimately best for the narrative’s impact. While The Hunger Games is a dystopian romance story that blends war commentary and escapism, the Stephen King adaptation leans more toward expressing political themes through deeper metaphors.

The Long Walk could be Francis Lawrence’s most disturbing film to date, even if it doesn’t feature all the cringey, brutal scenes in King’s book. In a separate interview, the filmmaker admitted to having made some tweaks to certain things, but they reportedly had King’s approval (via GamesRadar). It sounds like the movie’s similarities to The Hunger Games end with the premise.