Stephen King Apologizes For Sharing Fake Charlie Kirk Quote – But Not Before Dooming ‘The Long Walk’
Stephen King is no fan of Donald Trump or conservatives, but his rhetoric keeps getting his work and bottom line in trouble. He hit a new low when he posthumously slandered Turning Point USA founder and speaker Charlie Kirk after his voice was silenced by an assassin’s bullet.
King, in error, accused the young-yet-late Kirk on X of supporting stoning gays to death. “He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin’,” King wrote in a deleted post that’s still out there in screenshots and the archive.
Confusion arose from an incident where Kirk clarified a passage in Leviticus that was misinterpreted during an exchange. King is apologizing up and down on his feed, including in posts quoting his original tweet. “I was wrong, and I apologize. I have deleted the post,” he added in one instance.
However, his mea culpas and damage control come too late. The damage has already been done, and it has ramifications beyond the life that’s tragically cut short. There’s no comparison admittedly, but King probably screwed the chances of the latest release based on a book of his.
King’s remarks directed at Kirk were posted on the eve of The Long Walk‘s release and, causality or not, the dystopian thriller’s opening weekend did not go well. It bombed so badly that it is being called the worst opening for a Stephen King movie in over thirty years.
Long Walk, against stiff competition in Downton Abbey: Grand Finale, The Conjuring: The Last Rites, and Demon Slayer… Infinity Castle, opened in fourth place with $11 million on a $20M budget. As Cosmic Book News reports, this is the worst opening since Pet Sematary 2 in 1992.
That failed sequel to an undisputed classic starred Clancy Brown and Edward Furlong and made roughly $11.1M when adjusted for inflation according to CBN. Both films’ hauls are lower than The Monkey this year and 2019’s Doctor Sleep, both of which made $14M during their opening weekends.
The Monkey cost only between $10-$11M to make, so it was able to make its budget back and gross a decent profit relatively. Doctor Sleep was still a mid-budget movie at $45M, but it was a notorious disappointment at the box office upon opening in almost 4,000 theaters with projections of $25-$30M.
While it arguably did okay in the long run, it wasn’t the hit Warner Bros. was hoping for. The Long Walk could rebound internationally as it does earn good reviews and scores from both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
However, it has an uphill journey between living in the shadow of other King adaptations in recent memory and residing among a string of flops from Lionsgate. Hopefully, The Running Man will do the opposite and sprint to the finish line.
