Director Edgar Wright’s latest film adaptation, The Running Man, set to debut in theaters on November 7, brings a fresh take on Stephen King’s dystopian thriller, with Glen Powell leading as the desperate and determined protagonist. Unlike the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wright’s version leans heavily on King’s original 1982 novel, revitalizing the story’s dark vision of a near-future America controlled by an authoritarian government that uses a deadly televised game show to manipulate the masses.
A Fresh Vision for The Running Man Story
Edgar Wright, known for cult classics like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Baby Driver, first encountered The Running Man when he was about thirteen. The novel, part of Stephen King’s early works published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, is set in the year 2025 in a world crippled by economic collapse. In this dystopian future, a government-controlled TV show forces players to survive a deadly hunt by assassins called Hunters for a chance to win a billion-dollar prize.
Wright reflected on the difference between the original book and the 1987 film adaptation:
“I read The Running Man and was really bowled over by it,”
he said during post-production.
“I had actually read the book before I saw the 1987 film. So even though I enjoyed the film, I was very aware that it was radically different from the book, and it’s probably the first time as both an avid reader and a film fan that I was really aware of how different an adaptation could be.”
The 1987 movie was loosely based on the novel, with Schwarzenegger playing a more physical and heroic version of Ben Richards. Wright’s adaptation, co-written with Michael Bacall, aims to return to the darker themes and raw emotion of King’s original story, portraying Richards as a working-class man pushed to the brink by poverty and the illness of his daughter.
Rather than creating a simple remake, Wright positions this as a new interpretation of the source material.
“It’s clear, having done test screenings, that there are people who have neither read the book nor seen the 1987 film,”
he noted.
“But when it first came to me, I wasn’t interested in doing a remake of the film because there wasn’t any sort of reason to do that. I think the reason to remake a film is if there’s something else in the material. So it was never going to be a scene-for-scene literal remake. It was always, in our heads, a new adaptation of the source material.”
Glen Powell Embodies the Everyman Hero Ben Richards
The role of Ben Richards is played by Glen Powell, the actor known for recent projects like Anyone But You, Hit Man, and Twisters. Powell’s charm and relatable presence fit the character’s profile as a skilled but ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances. Wright stressed that Richards is a complex figure, not a superhero.
“The important thing with Ben Richards is not that he isn’t tough,”
Wright said.
“He’s an out-of-work construction worker, and we make it clear in the movie that he’s worked some of the toughest, shittiest jobs and worked outside a lot. So he’s capable, but he’s still not John Wick. He’s not a superhero. He’s a dad, and he’s kind of flying by the seat of his pants in the show. He’s on his heels for a lot of the movie, and I thought Glen was just perfect for that.”
For Powell, working with Wright was a dream come true.
“He’s been one of my favorite filmmakers,”
Powell shared during a conversation on the road.
“I made a list when I first moved out to Los Angeles, the guys that I would just kill to work with, and Edgar Wright was at the top of that list.”
Their collaboration began after Wright noticed Powell on the social platform X, leading to meetings in London and Los Angeles. It was during a chance encounter with Paramount executives that Powell learned about Wright’s involvement with the project.
“I ended up running into the heads of Paramount at that same restaurant,”
Powell said.
“And they said, ‘What do you want to do? Who do you want to work with?’ And I said, ‘I was just hanging with Edgar Wright, and I would kill to work with him.’ And they’re like, ‘Are you being serious? Do you know about The Running Man? He’s putting that together, so that very much could be a thing,’ and I was like ‘very cool, that’s great.’”
Despite not fitting the classic action-hero mold, Powell’s take on Richards aligns with the book’s depiction of the character as “scrawny” and worn down by hardship.
“Ben Richards is a guy who has a very short fuse and is engaged with the world and everything that’s happening with it on that short fuse,”
Powell explained.
“He’s a bit of an angry guy, and they’re looking at him like, ‘This guy has a short temper and is angry with the world, therefore we can kind of take advantage of him and his situation and make sure that we get viewers riled up.’”
Over the course of the story, Richards’ fight for survival evolves into a symbol of resistance. Powell pointed out,
“His daughter’s very sick, potentially days away from dying, and he’s put in a position in which he will do anything to save his daughter’s life. So he’s a guy who’s trying to protect his own and then realizes that his situation is not unique, that everybody is struggling to make ends meet and protect their own, and that by winning this game, by surviving, he can be a symbol and a beacon of change—not just for his daughter’s future, but everybody’s future.”
The Near-Future Setting Reflects Troubling Realities
The film, set in an alternate 2025, taps into themes that feel disturbingly relevant today. Similar to the recent adaptation of another King/Bachman novel, The Long Walk, The Running Man highlights concerns about reality television, economic inequality, and the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. Wright and Powell both emphasize how prophetic King’s story seems in light of current societal trends.
“Even since we shot the movie, it has become more and more timely,”
Powell observed.
“It is unbelievable how Stephen King saw the future of 2025, the year that we are in right now, and how eerie it is to see where we are living and what it looks like, and how similar it is to all the events that are happening in this book. This movie is obviously just cinematic escapism, and it’s fun and people are going to absolutely see it as just a blast of a movie experience, but what is incredibly fun is watching Stephen King the clairvoyant, and how we get to portray that, because it comments on a lot of things happening in the world.”
Wright agreed about the story’s sharp edge, pointing out its satirical elements even if the film is not a straightforward comedy.
“What’s crazy about the book is that it’s a pretty chilling prediction of where we’re at,”
he said.
“And that in itself is quite disturbing, that things are presented in a very kind of blunt way. I’m really happy with how it works in the movie because it doesn’t seem so fanciful, and that’s what’s disturbing about it.”
One notable prediction Wright finds especially compelling concerns the evolution of reality television.
“There has obviously been reality TV or forms of it going back to when the book was written,”
Wright said,
“but I think since the book was written, there is so much TV that has swam in the same waters. And I think, also, people now are much more aware of how a TV show gets made and how manipulative reality TV is, and also how many lives are ruined in the process. Whether it’s Jerry Springer or Sally Jesse Raphael, or even American Idol or X Factor, or those other shows, they play fast and loose with the contestants’ lives and mental health. There have been lots of stories like that that bring the book into chilling relief.”
The movie’s world, while futuristic, is designed to feel like a slightly altered version of our own time. Wright admitted he had initially forgotten the novel was set specifically in 2025 until working on the film.
“I realized, ‘Oh, a film set in 2025 is going to come out in 2025, that’s sort of wild,’”
he remarked.
“We don’t say in the film what year it’s set in. What, hopefully, will be clear to viewers is that we’re in like an alternate 2025… There’s not much technology in the movie that doesn’t exist in some form now, but I think what tends to happen is that there is new technology out there that’s pretty advanced, but then it seems to fail when it gets to a consumer level. So our basic idea was that in the upper-class world, technological advancements have gotten better, and everywhere else, everything else has gotten worse.”
Stephen King’s Enduring Influence on Film in 2025
Stephen King’s influence on film remains robust this year, with The Running Man marking the fourth feature adaptation of his work released in 2025, following The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and The Long Walk. Although The Running Man was first published in 1982, King wrote the novel a decade earlier during a difficult period when he lived in a trailer with his family in Maine and worried about supporting them. He famously wrote the entire book within a week, channeling his anxieties through the character of Ben Richards.
Powell reflected on the personal nature of the story for King:
“What’s really special about The Running Man is that it was [written] at a very specific moment in Stephen King’s life. A moment in which he was sort of feeling angry and powerless, very much like the underdog that Ben Richards is, and so that voice, that man against the system, really comes out in this book in a way that I think is indicative of where Stephen King was at during that moment in time. But what is so crazy is how timely it feels to everything that’s happening right now. It feels like the ordinary person is trying to do right in the world, and sometimes it can feel really unrewarding, and you can feel powerless and like you don’t know where to look or who to trust. I think a lot of that is in this story.”
With the movie’s theatrical release approaching, audiences can expect a gripping, tense experience that blends social commentary with thrilling action, anchored by Glen Powell’s sensitive portrayal of a man fighting for his family and, symbolically, for society’s future.
