'Shawshank' Director Missed Out on New King Film—Now It’s Coming From Someone Else
Ironically, the film adaptation of the dystopian novel was directed by the director of The Hunger Games.
During his time in the film industry, Stephen King has worked with a fair number of famous directors, but it is unlikely that anyone will be able to surpass the success of Frank Darabont's film adaptations. The collaboration between King and Darabont began with The Shawshank Redemption in 1994, and continued with the equally hit films The Green Mile and The Mist.
All three are definitely considered among the best adaptations of Stephen King's novels, but Darabont's collection could have once been replenished with another, also potentially successful, adaptation. At some point, however, something went wrong, and the film itself was shot almost 20 years later by a completely different director.
Frank Darabont planned to film Stephen King's The Long Walk
The director spoke about this almost immediately after the release of The Mist in 2007, admitting that working on the adaptation is in his immediate plans.
Darabont also shared some details of his own idea, at that time, according to the director, he planned to shoot The Long Walk with an even smaller budget than The Mist, so that in this way he would get a more arthouse and strange, but still more consistent with the original text version of The Long Walk.
Darabont ultimately never made the film for unknown reasons, and the rights to the film adaptation were acquired by The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence almost twenty years later.
The Long Walk will be released this fall
Although many directors tried to adapt King's novel for a long time, at some point something started to go wrong, and they eventually abandoned the work. Only Francis Lawrence, who had previously worked with the dystopian genre in the films The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, managed to achieve success in this case.
Lawrence himself admitted a few months ago that The Long Walk is his favorite King novel, and he had been trying to get the rights to the film adaptation for years, so he certainly had no right to make a mistake. By the way, The Long Walk will be released in theaters on September 12.
