Edgar Wright’s Running Man Brings King’s Dystopia to Life

Paramount Pictures has debuted the trailer for The Running Man (2025), Edgar Wright’s film adaptation of the dystopian novel of the same name by Stephen King. The 1982 novel was published under the pseudonym “Richard Bachman” and would become one of King’s most enduring works. This is in part because it is one of the shortest; King wrote it in a week. While it shares many elements with more recent dystopian fiction, The Running Man is an updated political allegory that skewers a nihilistic culture of corporatism and violence.

The 1987 adaptation, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, does not resemble King’s vision all that closely. While the novel’s concept of the reality game show in which participants are hunted and murdered by assassins was retained, the Schwarzenegger version was more science fiction than political satire and takes place in a near future (2027) as opposed to the book’s present day (2025). The movie is loud, fun, and packed with spy gadgets, but it’s missing a lot of the blacker humor and emotional heft of the source material.

Set in an unnamed future United States, which is depicted in The Running Man as a dystopian hellscape, we follow blue-collar worker Ben Richards as he is blacklisted for attempting to unionize the mailroom at his work. Richards lives in “Co-Op City” with his ailing daughter and wife and finds himself and his family being evicted from their home. He takes a chance when he learns about The Running Man, a violent television program that is the number one show in the nation. As a Runner, Richards will be targeted by professional hitmen known as Hunters and tracked with advanced technology, all while being broadcast live to the nation.

Richards is a wanted man; the reigning leader of the unemployment line, he is on the run from the authorities who have 12 hours to catch him and put him on death row. As such, the book reads like a thriller: The entire second half is Richard’s game of cat and mouse with the authorities, who have divided the job into three different teams. The show is simple. For 30 consecutive days of survival, the Runner will receive $1 billion, but no one has even lasted 30 hours (the record is 197 hours). Contestants do make a certain amount of money per hour that they survive, and a bounty for every Hunter that they kill, so for the most part, desperation forces players to play.

Ben Richards does much better than he should. The public supports him, and he makes some unlikely allies. As is typical of the noir that King writes (think The Shining), The Running Man never gets too happy. The trailer for the new film adaptation bodes well for fans of the source material. Edgar Wright, who has directed the likes of Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, and Last Night in Soho, first expressed interest in doing an adaptation of the novel in 2017. In 2021, Paramount Pictures greenlit Wright’s project, which he co-wrote with Michael Bacall. Judging from the new trailer, they’re looking to get back to the heart of the matter.

The Running Man is, first and foremost, a survival thriller. In that, we can see that Glen Powell is the ideal choice to take the lead role as Ben Richards. Powell has proven himself in the action genre before, but as the trailer shows, it looks like the role is right up his alley. Powell’s Ben Richards is scrawny and desperate, but it also seems like there will be room for the character to grow. Josh Brolin plays the opportunistic and smarmy game show host Dan Killian, who befriends and goads Ben into signing up. The game, of course, is on—both for Richards and the regime, as his unlikely rise in popularity makes him a threat.

Lee Pace is Evan McCone, the lead Hunter on Ben’s trail. Jayme Lawson plays his wife, Sheila, and Colman Domingo will play the charismatic game show host Bobby Thompson. Michael Cera has a role as a rebel leader named Bradley Throckmorton. Supporting roles will be played by William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, and Daniel Ezra.

A Potential Distinction to Make from the Schwarzenegger Version

Whether or not Wright and Bacall stick to the bleak ending is still up in the air. However, it does seem like The Running Man will be more faithful to the source material than the 1987 film. Early reviews of the trailer have fans convinced that the movie won’t pull any punches on the more cynical political and social themes of King’s novel.

Fans of Stephen King’s Bachman era books will have another film to look forward to in 2025, as the film adaptation of another of his novels, The Long Walk, has a release date of September 12, 2025—two months before The Running Man’s November 7 date. Both The Long Walk and The Running Man are ultra-violent novels about televised dystopian death games that serve as pointed political commentaries from a nation in decay.

The Long Walk was also a precursor to “The Hunger Games” and “Battle Royale,” but its effect can be seen just as clearly on the Ender’s Game saga or other aspects of dystopian fiction as a whole. In 2025, The Long Walk and The Running Man will be out almost simultaneously. It’s going to be a very interesting year for fans of King, and for anyone, for that matter, who is intrigued or concerned about what our entertainment, capitalism, and empathy have become.