On August 30, 2025, Lionsgate held a special screening where the invited audience was required to walk on treadmills at the regulation 3 mph for the duration of the film, under threat of being thrown out if they slowed down.
In the book, the walkers have to maintain a speed of 4 mph, but in the movie at the request of Stephen King, they changed it to 3 mph as he felt the original speed was unrealistic for the duration of the contest.
David Jonsson didn't speak with Mark Hamill on set, because it didn't feel right to get to know the man playing The Major, an authority figure within the totalitarian regime. "Actually, I didn't talk to him at all on set. I didn't say a single word to him. Some of the boys did, because, y'know... it's Luke Skywalker, man! But a few of us just didn't. Not in a rude way, it just felt right to honor the fact that there was some form of separation," he shared. He noted it was difficult to avoid interaction with Hamill, who is nothing like The Major - as Jonsson found out when they met after production: "That was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, because Mark Hamill is just the nicest soul you've ever met," he praised. "I met him after we were done filming, and he just gives me the biggest hug and goes on to tell me Hollywood stories. I'm just like, 'Don't ever stop!' He's the loveliest soul and he's absolutely phenomenal in the film."
Although Stephen King has said he didn't explicitly intend it that way, The Long Walk novel is often seen as an allegorical critique of the Vietnam War and the senseless death and spectacle of state-sanctioned violence that accompanied the conflict. "You write from your times, so certainly, that was in my mind, but I never thought about it consciously," King told Vanity Fair. "I was writing a kind of a brutal thing. It was hopeless, and just what you write when you're 19 years old, man. You're full of beans and you're full of cynicism, and that's the way it was."
Cooper Hoffman said that he and his co-stars walked "15 miles a day in 100-degree heat on concrete [and with] no shade," totaling almost 400 miles. The grueling long takes in the hot Winnipeg, Canada, sun took a toll. "There was a real - when you got there and you started walking - anxiety of actually making it through the day," he added.