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The Running Man is getting a new movie adaptation because Edgar Wright didn’t think Arnold Schwarzenegger lived up to the Stephen King book
Edgar Wright believes the 1987 version of The Running Man didn’t follow the book closely enough – so he made his own adaptation, and it’s coming out next month
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Like most readers, Edgar Wright gets disappointed when a film adaptation doesn’t follow a book closely enough. Unlike most readers, Edgar Wright is an accomplished director and he could do something about it. For Wright, this means making his own version of The Running Man, one of his favorite Stephen King stories.
“I had read Stephen King’s The Bachman Books when I was a teenager, and The Running Man was one of those books,” Wright says during a panel at New York Comic Con. “As you probably know, Stephen King wrote under a pseudonym for like four books before he got rumbled, and then they released them as a paperback. And I read that as a teenager, and I read it before I saw the 1987 film.”
The Spaced director continued, “So, when I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, I was very aware that it was very loosely based on the book. I always felt that there was a whole part of the story that hadn’t been adapted. My favorite remakes are ones that kind of do something different from the other one. So, this is not an attempt to remake that film, this is something that’s more faithful to the book.”
Wright made it clear that he wasn’t trying to be negative about the original film, and that his version will have some homages, including putting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face on the $100 bill.
The Running Man hits theaters on November 14, 2025.
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