The best damn Stephen King website on the net,Lilja’s Library, caught up with Frank Darabont, the director who’s given us the bonza film versions of King’s “The Green Mile”, “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Mist”, to talk about the newly-released “Mist” DVD (it apparently includes a black-and-white version of the film, which everyone who’s seen the DVD seems to enjoy more than the color version that was released. Interesting). Near the tail end of the interview, Lilja asked Darabont about his plans to bring King’s “The Long Walk” to the big screen.

Don’t look for it in theatres too soon, says the filmmaker.

“It’s on one of the burners on the stove you know. It’s not on the front burner at the moment but I imagine it’s going to be something that I’ll do probably within the next five years. I don’t have any immediate plans…”

King should be happy with the film – when it does get made, says Darabont.

“That one will be very, very faithful to Stephen’s story, even more faithful then The Mist was. But it doesn’t bear a huge budget because it’s a very existential strange little story. To do it faithfully then it winds up being a strange little movie so not a blockbuster, just a very interesting film I think.”

Darabont says he sees the story as “Stephen King meets Eugene Ionesco and I definitely want the movie to have that same feeling.”

“The Long Walk”, which King wrote as ‘Richard Bachman’, is set in the near future, and centers on a young boy who is selected to take the Long Walk-a deadly contest of endurance and determination, in which each step can be your last.