The Long Walk is struggling to compete with another 2025 Stephen King movie. King originally published the dystopian novel of the same name in 1979 using the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The movie adaptation was directed by the Hunger Games franchise’s Francis Lawrence.
Both the book and movie follow a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly compeтιтion where teen boys must walk continuously as far as possible until only one is left. The cast of The Long Walk includes veteran performers Mark Hamill and Judy Greer alongside an ensemble of up-and-comers that includes Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Garrett Wareing, and Roman Griffin Davis.
Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, The Long Walk earned $1.3 million in domestic theaters during its preview showings on Thursday night. This is $600,000 less than the $1.9 million preview night showings of 2025’s earlier Stephen King adaptation, Osgood Perkins’ supernatural horror movie The Monkey.
The Long Walk cannot be compared to the other Stephen King movie from 2025, the life-affirming drama The Life of Chuck, because Chuck did not have wide release preview screenings, having had a limited theatrical debut the week before its wide expansion.
What This Means For The Long Walk
The Long Walk having lower preview numbers than The Monkey is slightly disappointing for the new movie, because its reported budget of $20 million is twice as much as The Monkey‘s $10 million. However, both Stephen King movies have slim budgets compared to many modern Hollywood films.
Movies typically only need to earn back two and a half times their budgets in order to break even in theaters, which may place The Long Walk‘s estimated break-even point somewhere around $50 million.
If it maintains its current trajectory relative to The Monkey (which was a hit, grossing $68.9 million worldwide), it could still roughly hit that mark, legging out to about $47 million.
Our Take On The Long Walk’s Box Office Previews
The preview numbers of 2025’s The Long Walk may be impacted by the fact that it has arrived in early September, when the school year in the U.S. has begun and ticket buying on weekdays generally slows down somewhat. It remains to be seen if its opening weekend will see a boost between Friday and Sunday.
Even if The Long Walk‘s 3-day debut comes in below The Monkey‘s (which was $14 million), it has a relatively quiet month ahead of it, during which it could become a sleeper hit. The next major big-budget movie to hit theaters is Tron: Ares, which doesn’t debut until October 10, giving the dystopian movie plenty of time to catch up.
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