When Stephen King wrote The Running Man back in 1982 under his nom-de-plume Richard Bachman, the year 2025 felt so impossibly distant that it was possible to imagine a dystopia where expert assassins hunted innocent men for sport on the most popular television show in America. And while reality TV hasn’t sunk to that low quite yet, Hollywood couldn’t resist bringing King’s unique fusion of The Fugitive, The Truman Show, and The Hunger Games back to the big screen this year.
The newest adaptation of The Running Man, starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, and Colman Domingo, hits theaters November 7. In a new trailer, Ben Richards (Powell) is seen volunteering for the Running Man reality show when he’s blacklisted for employment, and has no other means to secure medical care for his young daughter.
“The rules are simple,” he’s told by TV producer Dan Killian (Brolin). “Survive 30 days with the entire nation hunting you down.”
Nothing about Richard’s quest for survival in the trailer looks simple as he dodges bullets, a motorcycle gang, a bazooka, and even an airplane in free-fall. “I’m still here,” he barks into the camera after falling into a flaming sewer pit, “you shit eaters.”
The Running Man was first turned into a movie back in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Family Feud host Richard Dawson in the lead roles. “The Running Man has the manners and the gadgetry of a sci-fi adventure film,” wrote New York Times film critic Vincent Canby, “but is, at heart, an engagingly mean, cruel, nasty, funny send-up of television. It’s not quite ‘Network, but then it also doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
This new Running Man is one of many Stephen King TV/movie adaptations in the works. New iterations of Carrie, The Long Walk, The Institute, and Fairy Tale are also in various stages of gestation, along with spinoffs of It and The Shining.
From Rolling Stone US
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