The Long Walk Surpasses Stand By Me In Stephen King's Highest-Grossing Charts

The Long Walk has now surpassed one of Stephen King’s best movie adaptations at the global box office.

Per Box Office Mojo, The Long Walk has made over $53 million at the global box office, including $34.3 million domestically. This means that the thriller overtakes 1986’s Stand by Me, another King adaptation, which also has a central premise about friendship and brotherhood. That beloved classic, which is considered one of the best adaptations based on any King story, collected $52 million globally, not accounting for inflation.

The survival thriller was just the third King adaptation to be released this year, alongside The Monkey, Life of Chuck, and the upcoming remake of The Running Man. While The Monkey is currently the highest-grossing King movie this year, making $63 million, The Long Walk is not far behind.

With a $20 million budget, The Long Walk debuted with $11 million at the domestic box office. While it may seem like a box office disappointment, the King adaptation was distributed by Lionsgate, which means that much of their budget was covered by international presales. Hence, The Long Walk may already be a success after all, and the current total is at least within the high end of breakeven and possibly in the profit margins.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed several Hunger Games movies, the thriller is the first King adaptation based on the book of the same name. The original book was published in 1979 under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. Despite several attempts to adapt the novel, including one by George A. Romero, it would take nearly four decades until The Long Walk was finally reimagined for the big screen.

The Long Walk easily became one of the highest-rated King movies, securing an 88% Tomatometer and 85% Popcornmeter. While the horror icon has not personally spoken about the movie since its release, Lawrence did share that King approved of the dystopian adaptation:

“He had to approve me and JT, all of that, which was fine. We had to share the script, which was probably the scariest moment, because we had made some tweaks to certain things. He luckily liked it and approved it, which was great. Then we went and made the movie and when we felt like we were really pretty damn close to being at the finished product after some test screenings and things like that, we sent it to him, and he had a really nice call with me and seemed to enjoy the movie very much.”

While the dystopian thriller has been in theaters for over a month, it will arrive for home release in the coming days. The Long Walk will be available for video-on-demand, starting October 21, while physical copies like 4K and Blu-ray will be released on November 25. Additionally, the King 2025 movie slate will conclude with Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, set to release on November 1.

Release Date

September 12, 2025

Runtime

108 Minutes

Director

Francis Lawrence

Producers

Roy Lee, Steven Schneider

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