Edgar Wright’s Running Man: More King, Less Schwarzenegger

Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer for The Running Man (2025), directed by Edgar Wright. This update to the Stephen King-penned novel of the same name—which was published under the author’s pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982—will be a departure from the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led 1987 film, which was a more action-oriented affair.

Stephen King published his first novel under the Richard Bachman pseudonym in the late 1970s and continued to do so with moderate success until 1984, when he was exposed by a persistent critic. The Bachman books were King’s way of testing the adage that an author can only have one novel in them by publishing under a different name. The Running Man is one of the few Bachman books to stand the test of time, in large part due to the premise of King’s novel, which he reportedly wrote in just seven days: set in the dystopian future of 2025, the same year the film will be released, the novel features a totalitarian United States wracked by disinformation and civil unrest, and dominated by a brutal television game show.

Ben Richards is a small-time worker who lives in “Co-Op City” with his wife and terminally ill daughter. Blacklisted after being unable to find work for several months, Richards decides to risk everything and sign up for The Running Man, a no-holds-barred reality television game show that is consistently the most popular program on air. On The Running Man, a player (known as a Runner) is hunted down by professional killers (called Hunters) in front of a live audience and millions of viewers at home. All events are live-streamed to people across the country, and Ben is handed the additional designation of “enemy of the state” in addition to his in-game persona. Given a 12-hour head start, the hunted becomes the hunter in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

In short, the plot is simple: see if you can last 30 days and you win $1 billion. Failure to make it means death. With no one even making it to the 200-hour mark (the best time ever recorded is 197 hours), each hour that a player manages to survive nets them cash. Dispatching a Hunter also earns a prize and offers the best chance of survival against the vicious assassins that the network deploys. Many players enter the show as a last resort, with debts and other issues plaguing them. Ben does well for himself out of the starting gate—but as King fans will recall, the book does not exactly end on a happy note.

The original The Running Man was released in 1987, taking many of the central premises of King’s original novel and amping up the sci-fi and action elements. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, the film leaned heavily into Schwarzenegger’s action star persona and departed in numerous ways from the original, including Ben Richards himself, who is “scrawny” and “pre-tubercular” in King’s novel but barely needs to break a sweat in Glaser’s adaptation. The movie remains a pulpy, energetic exercise in action and gleeful ‘80s excess, but it sacrifices some of the book’s darker points and emotional resonance.

Edgar Wright has been attached to helm the new adaptation since 2017, when he announced his intentions of tackling the King novel. The project was finally greenlit by Paramount in 2021, and Wright signed on co-writer Michael Bacall to adapt the novel with him. After first taking a slightly more satirical look at the lives of the undead in Shaun of the Dead, Wright turned his hand to the world of car-chasing in Baby Driver and has dabbled in ghost stories and nostalgia in films such as Last Night in Soho. Wright’s intentions of taking the darker parts of King’s novel more seriously have been made explicit in interviews, as has his stated goal to weave in subtext to Ben Richards’ story that was not in the original novel.

Glen Powell, who earned a Best Actor Oscar nod for his work in Everything Everywhere All at Once, appears in the new trailer as the desperate and resourceful Ben Richards. Josh Brolin plays Dan Killian, the oily television executive who presents the game show to Ben but ultimately persuades the former into joining the game as the “enemy of the state.” Other roles in the film include Lee Pace as lead Hunter Evan McCone, Jayme Lawson as Ben’s wife Sheila, Colman Domingo as the game show host Bobby Thompson, and Michael Cera as the rebel Bradley Throckmorton. The rest of the cast consists of William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, and Daniel Ezra.

There is no word yet on whether Wright and Bacall will be adhering to the novel’s nihilistic conclusion or not, though early impressions suggest that some of its bleaker elements will be included, including the book’s intended messages about poverty, desperation, and the numbing nature of watching televised violence.

The Running Man will be Wright’s first feature-length film since Last Night in Soho in 2022.

2025 Is Bachman Year

The Running Man isn’t the only Bachman novel being adapted in 2025. Another of King’s early novels, The Long Walk (1979), will also have a film adaptation of the same name in 2025. That movie is currently scheduled for a September 12 release, with The Running Man following on November 7.

Much like The Running Man, The Long Walk is a competition story and another in King’s novels dealing with totalitarianism, surveillance, and media manipulation. With two such tales getting the big screen treatment so close together, 2025 is already looking like a banner year for Stephen King fans and perhaps a more sobering year for anyone examining how entertainment, capitalism, and empathy intersect in modern life.