What if reality -tv made a show that combined Octopus games with The Hunger Games to bloodthirsty effect? That is the prerequisite for The running manwhich is based on the Stephen King novel with the same name and focuses on America’s most popular and most deadly TV show.
If it sounds like a particular Korean drama, The running maN came decades earlier book was published in 1982, and the first film version, starring in Spandex-clad Arnold Schwarzenegger, came five years later and appears to be much more violent. And as you see from the trailer below, it is also very grit looks.
“Everyone runs”: What is the running man about?
Look at
The running man is the name of America’s most seen TV show, and in that show, the participants-call runners have to keep alive for thirty days while the cameras follow their each movement. Oh, and they have a pack of professional assassins on their tails, nor do they pretend assassins. Think American gladiators tool with attack rifle and hand grenades.
Glen Powell plays blue collar-hero Ben Richards, who needs to win prize money to save his sick daughter. And as Paramount Pictures explains, producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) can regret persuading him to participate: “Ben’s troop, instincts and grains transform him into an unexpected fan favorite – and a threat to the whole system. Like Ratings Skyrocket, the father does, and Ben must not leave hunters but a nation that is dependent on seeing him.”
As fun as the Arnie version was, it fell a lot of the more serious parts of the book to focus on making a typical action movie from the 80s. But the novel was pretty bleak, and some would say, Prescient: It takes place in an authoritarian OS, where the economy is collapsed, an elite get all wealth, resources are scarce, and the government uses propaganda, draconic censorship and reality -TV to keep the population quiet.
This is really dark things and it will be interesting to see how much of it contains in the actual movie. I have high hopes: Edgar Wright has said he liked the original movie, but wanted the book to have a better adjustment. And this version has a much wider extent than the original: Where it was put in a single city, the 2025 version is a cross-country flight.
The running man will be released in theaters on November 7, 2025.
