Edgar Wright Revives The Running Man with a Fresh Take

Paramount Pictures has just released the official first trailer for The Running Man (2025), a new adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian thriller of the same name. Written in 1982 and first published under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Running Man was famously adapted into a feature film back in 1987—albeit with a very different interpretation of the material. Edgar Wright’s new film, on the other hand, may be closer to what King fans want.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen King released several novels under the name Richard Bachman. The ruse was finally uncovered in 1984, but several of those books, including The Running Man, have gone on to become fan favorites in their own right. Published in 1982, The Running Man was allegedly written in a single week. It takes place in the United States, which has fallen into a totalitarian dictatorship, and features a merciless reality TV game show as the nation’s primary form of entertainment.

The main character is Ben Richards, a low-income family man living in a place called “Co-Op City” with his wife and a sick daughter. Blacklisted and unable to find work, Richards decides to participate in the most popular game show in the country. On The Running Man, contestants must evade a team of Hunters, hired gunfighters who are trying to track them down. The player’s location is streamed to millions of viewers in real time, and the game becomes a matter of survival as both the Runners and the Hunters are armed and ready to kill.

Richards is labeled as an enemy of the state and is given a 12-hour head start on the game. His goal is simple but terrifying: remain alive for 30 days, and the player is rewarded with $1 billion. It’s never been done, and the record time for the game is 197 hours. There are no lifelines, but each day that a Runner can survive, they’re awarded money. The game also features a “kill bonus”—if the Runner can kill any of the Hunters, they will also be awarded money. It’s a miserable proposition, but given the circumstances for Ben Richards, it’s a risk he’s willing to take. He plays the game surprisingly well, but as any King reader will know, there are no happy endings in this story.

The 1987 film of the same name certainly took inspiration from King’s book, but it also changed a great deal of the material. It leaned more into science fiction and action film conventions, retaining the basic premise of a deadly televised game but stripping away most of the original story’s bleak satire and pathos. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards was a beefed-up action hero, while King’s character had been described in the book as a “scrawny five-footer who looked more pre-tubercular than pumped up.” The film was flashy and exciting, and a product of its time—fans of action movies and Schwarzenegger’s later Terminator series will no doubt still find enjoyment in it. But to say it’s different from the original book is an understatement.

Wright has been rumored to be attached to this project since 2017, and he has officially been directing The Running Man since 2021, when Paramount Pictures greenlit the production. Wright is writing the screenplay with Michael Bacall. The project will be a new adaptation of King’s book and aims to be more faithful to the book’s original tone and themes.

It looks like they may be succeeding based on this first trailer. Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards and offers a different side to his repertoire, as Richards is less the charming ladies’ man Powell has been known for in some of his past roles. Josh Brolin plays Dan Killian, the smooth and sneering host and executive producer of the game show, who gets Richards to sign up for the game under the table. As Ben Richards does better than anyone expects and even manages to win some favor with the audience, he also becomes a public threat to the state.

Lee Pace plays Evan McCone, the lead Hunter on the team that’s tasked with the job of tracking Ben Richards down. Jayme Lawson plays Ben’s wife, Sheila, and Colman Domingo plays Bobby Thompson, the game show host. Michael Cera stars as Bradley Throckmorton, and there are also roles for William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, and Daniel Ezra.

As for whether Wright and Bacall will be able to commit to the famously bleak ending of the book, we will have to wait and see. However, it looks like this adaptation of The Running Man will not shy away from the book’s themes of hopelessness, desperation, and the moral rot of watching televised violence.

The Bachman Bonanza

The Running Man isn’t the only Bachman story fans will get to see on the big screen in 2025. A film adaptation of The Long Walk, another dystopian novel that King wrote under the same pseudonym in 1979, will also premiere that year. The film is set to release on September 12, while The Running Man will hit theaters on November 7. Like The Running Man, The Long Walk tells the story of a deadly competition, but that one centers on a forced march that the contestants are required to keep a certain pace or face severe consequences.

With both stories aiming at government violence, media complicity, and the high stakes of simply trying to survive, it’s safe to say that 2025 is going to be a good year for King fans. It’s also a year where audiences may be asking some very necessary questions about the state of media and entertainment, and where to find empathy in a capitalist system.