King’s Running Man Gets Second Life with 2025 Film

Paramount Pictures has dropped the official trailer for The Running Man (2025), Edgar Wright’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian thriller novel of the same name. Originally released under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982, this is the second attempt at bringing King’s grim but still wryly satirical tale to the big screen (the first being the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring action flick of the same name from 1987). It looks like Wright’s The Running Man will bring us closer to the tone and spirit of King’s novel.

Stephen King, under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, published five novels between the late ’70s and early ’80s, with The Running Man being among the more lasting works. King was revealed as the author behind the pseudonym in 1984, and while some of his Bachman novels haven’t aged particularly well (Rage and The Long Walk, for example), The Running Man is the one that has withstood the test of time best. It was written quickly, in one week, King has said, and takes place in a dystopian, state-run United States in the year 2025.

The Running Man was, by all accounts, one of King’s bleaker works, with a central narrative focused on Ben Richards, a working-class man who lives in “Co-Op City” with his wife and terminally ill daughter. In the totalitarian society in which he lives, Richards has been blacklisted, and he is desperate for a solution to his family’s financial and health issues. The Running Man is the most-watched television program in the nation, a competition where “Runners” are given a starting point and some cash, then set free for a live television hunt in which assassins (“Hunters”) are given the task of killing them, and the viewers at home are allowed to watch.

The rules of the game are relatively straightforward: be the last Runner left standing in 30 days, and win $1 billion. No one has ever made it even close, with the record at 197 hours. For every day they survive, however, Runners can win money, while the Hunters they can dispatch earn the Runner a set fee, encouraging them to make as much as they can before the 30 days are up. For all the obvious excitement it generates, the most successful contestants are typically people with something to lose, as Richard has.

The 1987 film adaptation is still remembered as a ‘fun’ or at least engaging watch, but in fairness, it is not a very faithful adaptation of the novel. While it mostly maintains the central concept of a televised hunt with the added pizzazz of action flick tropes and a time loop, it is largely a very different movie. The adaptation took heavy influence from sci-fi action movies and the larger-than-life style of the late ’80s, and while it was loud, fun, and packed with goofy gadgets, it left behind a good deal of the novel’s sting.

Ben Richards, as played by Schwarzenegger, was less “scrawny” and “pre-tubercular,” as King described him, and more built, tough, and glamorous. The resulting film, while probably most remembered for its unintentionally campy action scenes, feels more like a spectacle than a narrative, and it misses some of the book’s satire about the violence and escapism of late-20th-century American media culture.

For this, The Running Man, Edgar Wright has been attached since his 2017 announcement that he would be directing the adaptation, with Paramount greenlighting the project in 2021 and teaming Wright with screenwriter Michael Bacall for the project. The official description from early on in the process has been that Wright and Bacall were committed to more faithfully adapting the novel while still managing to put their spin on the characters and action.

The newly-released trailer doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Star Glen Powell embodies Ben Richards as closer to King’s description—more desperation than suave and with far less muscle mass. Josh Brolin plays Dan Killian, the owner and host of The Running Man program, who is manipulative and charismatic in his coaxing of Ben into entering the game. As Ben gains more popularity with the audience, the show quickly becomes both a boost to his family’s finances and a serious threat to the government.

Hopefuls for The Long Walk

Fans of Bachman-King, though, can keep their eyes on one more project. The Long Walk, another King-penned dystopian competition novel written in 1979, has its upcoming film adaptation that is set to release on September 12 in 2025—just two months before The Running Man releases on November 7. As such, next year is likely to be a very, very big one for Stephen King fans, particularly of his Bachman work.

Like The Running Man, The Long Walk is another of King’s tales of government brutality and the horrific effects of a media culture based on the exploitation of people’s worst instincts. It is expected to hit theaters in 2025, as The Long Walk film was first announced in August 2021. Since then, not much more news has broken on the project, but given King’s involvement (per Variety, he is writing and producing on the film) and the fact that his later work, The Stand is currently being given a fresh take in a successful adaptation, fans of dystopian competition thrillers have some reason to be hopeful.