Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk was made on a тιԍнт budget, and the director of the Hunger Games movies explained some ways they were able to accomplish this. The Long Walk will be a milestone Stephen King adaptation, as it is based on the first novel he ever wrote, and appears to have influenced the later Hunger Games books, making Lawrence a fitting choice to direct.

The Long Walk follows the тιтular compeтιтion, where a large group of teenage boys must walk at a certain speed indefinitely and are sH๏τ for failing, until only one remains. A movie adaptation of The Long Walk has been in development hell for years, but it will finally hit the big screen on September 12, 2025.

However, the Hunger Games movies certainly had bigger budgets, as they were intended for a younger and broader audience. The R-rated The Long Walk was stripped down, as they had to be more “financially responsible,” according to Lawrence in an interview with ScreenRant‘s Joe Deckelmeier.

The Long Walk cut costs by reducing the number of participants in the compeтιтion from 100 in the book to 50 in the movie. They also omitted some of the crowds that appear in the book, so they would not have to pay for extras. Check out Lawrence’s full explanation of these cost-cutting measures below:

I’ve always really liked making decisions because decisions start to create parameters, and I think that I feel more comfortable and more relaxed once there are more parameters and fewer choices to be had. I think it’s very problematic when you can do anything at any time.

We wanted to be financially responsible with this movie, because it’s a tough movie. We made it for a small amount of money, and that instantly creates parameters that I think are really interesting. How do we strip the crew down? What does that do to the number of boys? There’s a hundred in the book, but we have 50. What does that do to crowds? We can’t have every town they walk through be filled with people because that’s thousands of extras that we can’t afford. That means we have to build into the story that really we’re only going to have crowds at the end.

Part of it is that there’s fun in coming up with the creativity of the approach to the movie. And that was also driven, not even really financially, but by the kind of movie this is. Once that gun goes off and they start walking, we’re on the move with them. I think there are two other scenes in the movie, which are flashbacks, where we’re inside and the boys aren’t walking. We had to figure out what that means. Where’s our base camp? How are we shooting electric vehicles with cranes on them and caravans of cars with the sound guy and the video village?

Everything is on the move, and you do a three-quarter of a mile walk for every take, and then everybody goes back to one, and you do it again and again and again. It was a very unique approach to making a movie.

What Being “Financially Responsible” Means For The Long Walk

King’s dystopian fiction novel features many of the same themes as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, which also revolves around a brutal compeтιтion with one survivor, the winner rewarded with an apparent life of ease. Lawrence took over directing the Hunger Games movies from the second installment onwards, and the mega-blockbuster status of this franchise meant that he would have had nearly unlimited resources.

The Long Walk has a different target audience and comes at a different time at the box office, making a тιԍнтer budget the smart choice. However, based on The Long Walk’s trailers, it doesn’t look like the movie will suffer because of this. It still has a high-quality appearance and is driven by the harrowing story, with relatively few A-listers working well with the younger cast.

Our Take On The Long Walk’s Reduced Budget

The Long Walk could even benefit from being a more bare-bones movie. The theatricality and luxury of the Capitol are a major thematic component of The Hunger Games, and it was justified to pour resources into bringing this to life when the movie could easily earn it back. In contrast, focusing solely on the core events of The Long Walk will work in its favor.

50 boys instead of 100 won’t have any real effect on the story, and I believe it’s more interesting if there aren’t crowds watching them pᴀss by, potentially implying people are too disturbed by the event to want to witness it. These small changes will make it easier for The Long Walk to be a box office success, but could also enhance the narrative in subtle ways.