- calendar_today August 19, 2025
The Running Man Returns: 2025 Trailer Teases Faithful Adaptation
Paramount Pictures has debuted the first trailer for The Running Man (2025), the film adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The film, directed by Edgar Wright, will be a new take on the dystopian action thriller. King originally published the work as Richard Bachman in 1982, and it would not be adapted until the 1987 action flick of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wright’s new film, arriving in theaters on November 7, is expected to be a more faithful adaptation of King’s book than the one seen in the past.
The Running Man was originally published in 1982 under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym and is said to have been written in a single week. Stephen King would continue to publish novels under that name until 1985. However, in 1984, his secret was leaked to the press. One of the novels that King published as Bachman was The Running Man, a dystopian tale of totalitarianism and bloodthirsty media entertainment. The story takes place in 2025, the same year that the new film version will come out. By this future date, the United States has fallen apart, the government has been replaced with a totalitarian regime, and a new form of prime-time television entertainment has taken over in the form of the eponymous Running Man competition.
The setup of the Running Man game show is fairly simple. A contestant is an “enemy of the state” and given 12 hours to evade capture. From there, the game show begins. As long as the Runner stays alive for 30 days, they win $1 billion, an enormous sum of money, even in this fictional universe. The rule has never been broken—no one has ever even reached 30 hours. However, each hour the Runner stays alive, they win a monetary prize, and every Hunter killed nets the contestant a cash prize of their own. These cash incentives serve as a small motivation for contestants to enter the game, as their backstories often show that they are in desperate straits and have nothing to lose. Regardless of these incentives, no one has ever made it to Day 30, with the record being 197 hours and 42 minutes. However, Ben Richards does not last as long as the top spot, but surprisingly, makes it much further than anyone else, but as anyone familiar with King’s work knows, it probably isn’t a happy ending.
The Running Man had previously been adapted as an action film of the same name in 1987. The film is set in the same dystopian universe but ditches much of the satire and emotional impact of the source material to be an action sci-fi romp. The basic premise of a deadly game show is retained, but the 1987 film became a mix of the ‘80s big-budget action stylings of the time and a heavy dose of sci-fi movie tropes. Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards is more a victim of circumstance than necessity. A far cry from the book’s description of the character as “scrawny” and “pre-tubercular,” the film’s Ben Richards is more about his Schwarzenegger Six-Pack than his calloused hands and desperation. The 1987 film The Running Man is a fun action film that focuses on loud special effects, hi-jinks, and the action-hero personality of the character.
The 2025 film is set to be a lot more faithful to King’s book and its original tone. Edgar Wright, a British director known for Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, and Last Night in Soho, has been attached to the project since at least 2017. In 2021, Paramount Pictures greenlit Wright and Michael Bacall to write and produce a film version of The Running Man, faithful to King’s original novel. The new trailer looks like it will be a balance of these goals, with Glen Powell playing the part of Ben Richards, who loses much of his usual charm and is given a far grittier look. Josh Brolin will star as Dan Killian, the big-name host of the Running Man game show, who gets Ben to sign up for the competition through coercion and lies. As soon as the show begins and Ben becomes an unexpected fan-favorite, he also becomes a target for the government to squash as an enemy of the state.
Lee Pace will star as Evan McCone, a popular, ruthless Hunter who will lead the operation to track down and capture Ben Richards. Jayme Lawson is Ben’s wife Sheila, Colman Domingo is game show host Bobby Thompson, and Michael Cera stars as Bradley Throckmorton, a rebel with a murky agenda of his own. Other cast members include William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brien, and Daniel Ezra.
Dystopian King Headlines a Big Year
Stephen King fans will have more dystopian content to look forward to than The Running Man in 2025. The Long Walk, another of King’s competition stories, first published in 1979, will also see a film adaptation hitting theaters that same year. The Long Walk is set to release on September 12, while The Running Man is set for an eleventh-hour November 7 theatrical debut.
As both stories tackle themes of government cruelty, corporate media, the individual, and the cost of survival, 2025 is likely to be a big year for both Stephen King and his fans. It may also be a very sobering year for the entertainment industry, as both The Running Man and The Long Walk are tales that function as cautionary tales about the ends of entertainment, capitalism, and empathy.
