Stephen King’s Running Man Gets Gritty Reboot with Edgar Wright

Paramount Pictures has dropped the first trailer for The Running Man (2025), Edgar Wright’s new film adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian novel of the same name. Released under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982, the book has long called out for a remake faithful to the original story.

The 1987 film The Running Man, a blockbuster with Arnold Schwarzenegger, wasn’t terrible—just not what the book was going for. The original novel, a bleak satire of entertainment and desensitization, is famous for its pointed critique of the culture of violence in media and its disposable, anti-hero protagonist. Schwarzenegger’s muscular, invincible action star replaced that aspect entirely.

The Running Man and The Long Walk are both stories about brutal competitions in fictionalized dystopian futures of the United States. King wrote The Long Walk as early as 1979, and it would eventually be published in 1985 as a Bachman book.

Fans of Bachman and the later films that bear his name will have both movies on their radar: The Running Man comes first, with a theatrical release on November 7, 2025. The Long Walk follows on September 12, just two months later.

The Running Man Film Is Back, and It’s Gonna Kick Some Ass

As the book opens, Richards, the scrawny, pre-tubercular, blacklisted husband and father who is the focus of the novel, has been living hand-to-mouth on illegal work in Co-Op City while his wife and daughter scrape by on unemployment, medical care for their sick child, and rich people’s castoffs.

When Richards runs out of options, he sees the country’s most popular television show, The Running Man, as his only choice. The Running Man is a reality game show where contestants, called Runners, are actively hunted by a team of assassins called Hunters while the public watches, cheers, and speculates on the Runner’s fate in real time. When Ben Richards is branded an enemy of the state, he is allowed 12 hours’ head start before the contest begins.

The basic rules of the game are not complicated. Survive 30 days, and you win $1 billion; you start with nothing. No one has ever even come close to the record, set at 197 hours before the film takes place. Of course, you get some cash for every hour you survive; if you kill a Hunter or Hunters, that nets you some more. That makes it a valuable option for people who need to win—and who really can’t go to prison.

The original movie made several significant changes to the book to make it more of a high-octane action flick. Richards in the film is less of a loser and more of a desperate guy with skills—a lot of the charm of the character in the book, which is a kind of punk rock book, was that Richards is kind of scrawny, and he’s supposed to be this pre-tubercular kind of guy who’s trying.

The story in the book is so brutal in some ways, the character of Richard is one of the main ways that King tries to tell the story that “this is not a good thing, you shouldn’t like this.” In the film version, Richards is Arnold Schwarzenegger, so we kind of know he’s going to be okay. He might not make it through, but by all rights, he should, because he’s like an action hero.

Powerful Actors and Directors Are Pumping Life Into Bachman’s Stories

Wright has worked on several films since he first expressed interest in working on a film of The Running Man back in 2017. He and co-writer Michael Bacall’s script was officially greenlit by Paramount Pictures in 2021.

Wright is best known for his earlier work on British comedies like Shaun of the Dead, as well as more recent films like Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho. His filmography runs wide and far, and he is often at the head of big and buzzy projects.

The cast for The Running Man reflects this interest in high-stakes projects. The new trailer introduces Glen Powell as the Ben Richards lead character, showing a little less of the charisma Powell has been showcasing in recent years and focusing on grit and desperation. Powell’s character is likely to be as skilled as Schwarzenegger’s film incarnation, but will bring a grimier sort of desperation to the character.

Josh Brolin stars as Dan Killian, host and producer of the Running Man contest, and the smooth operator who manipulates Ben Richards into signing on. Killian has some skin in the game and some empathy for Richards as he manages to convince the blacklisted man to take the chance.

Fans will recognize Michael Cera from Baby Driver in the role of Bradley Throckmorton, a rebel in the film. Other notable cast members include William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brien, and Daniel Ezra.

Is The Running Man Film Going to Stay Faithful to King’s Bleak Story?

The recently announced release date and the first look at the cast and characters in the new trailer are a promising first look at a new, and hopefully faithful, adaptation. It’s not yet clear if Wright and Bacall are going to try to maintain the book’s famous ending, but there’s little to suggest that this film will be quite so cleaned up as the original.

Given the range of talent Wright has assembled for the film, it seems likely that The Running Man will satisfy audiences hungry for the grittier original and fans of the 1987 film looking for more.