What if reality TV made a show that combined Squid Game with The Hunger Games to bloodthirsty effect? That’s the premise of The Running Man, which is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and focuses on America’s most popular and most deadly TV show.
If that sounds like a certain Korean drama, The Running Man got there decades earlier – the book was published in 1982 and the first movie version, starring a spandex-clad Arnold Schwarzenegger, came five years later – and appears to be much more violent. And as you’ll see from the trailer below, it’s a lot grittier-looking too.
“Everybody runs”: what is The Running Man about?
The Running Man is the name of America’s most-watched TV show, and in that show the contestants – called Runners – must stay alive for thirty days while the cameras follow their every movement. Oh, and they’ve got a pack of professional assassins on their tails, and they’re not pretend assassins either. Think American Gladiators tooled up with assault rifles and hand grenades.
Glen Powell plays blue-collar hero Ben Richards, who needs to win the prize money in order to save his sick daughter. And as Paramount Pictures explains, producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) may regret persuading him to take part: “Ben’s defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite – and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.”
As fun as the Arnie version was, it dropped a lot of the more serious parts of the book to focus on making a typical 80s action movie. But the novel was pretty bleak and some would say, prescient: it takes place in an authoritarian US where the economy has collapsed, an elite few hoard all the wealth, resources are scarce and the government uses propaganda, draconian censorship and reality TV to keep the populace quiet.
This is really dark stuff, and it’ll be interesting to see how much of it features in the actual movie. I’ve got high hopes: Edgar Wright has said he liked the original movie but wished the book had been given a better adaptation. And this version has a much wider scope than the original: where that was set in a single city, the 2025 version is a cross-country flight.
The Running Man will be released in theaters on November 7, 2025.
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