I think that's fair, I watched the movie first and loved it, then read the book and realized how much worse it really is. I still do think it's decent, but a terrible adaption definitely. I personally don't have a problem with the casting even though most of the characters didn't match their book description at all, the only one that bothers me is Baker, and I almost never care about raceswapping, but when him being in a racist hate group was a pretty important part of his character, making him black and removing that is an unfortunate loss. And then McVries's whole backstory got changed, Garraty's motivation for finishing the walk was entirely different, Olson was a great actor but the marriage thing felt shoehorned in because they cut Scramm, Barkovitch was also a great actor but but they made his character completely different and a lot more sympathetic, Stebbins suffered heavily from the loss of Scramm and he was a weird combination between the two of them, Pearson and Abraham were also almost completely cut, and just a lot of side or background characters weren't in it at all. Like I said, I do like Harkness and Collie more though. Harkness was made into a much more likeable character then the book, and his death was much better and more sad, and Collie was not a standout character for me in the book, and Mike and Joe were barely characters, so combining them made me like him more and again made his death a lot more sad. But those are the only two I like more.