What would happen if reality TV did a program that combined? Squid game with The hunger games For the thirsty effect of blood? That is the premise of The man runningwhich is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name and focuses on the most popular and deadly television program in the United States.
If that sounds like a certain Korean drama, The running maN beat there decades before: the book was published in 1982 and the first version of the film, starring an Arnold Schwarzenegger coated with Spandex, came five years later, and seems to be much more violent. And as you will see in the trailer next, it is also much more sandy.
“Everyone runs”: What is man running from?
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The Running Man is the name of the most watched television program in the United States, and in that program, the contestants, called runners, must stay alive for thirty days while the cameras follow each of their movements. Ah, and they have a package of professional murderers in their tails, and they are not pretending murderers. Think of American gladiators prepared with assault rifles and hand grenades.
Glen Powell plays the blue neck hero Ben Richards, who needs to earn the prize money to save his sick daughter. And as Paramount Pictures explains, producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) can regret persuading him to participate: “Ben’s challenge, instincts and sand make him an unexpected favorite of fans, and a threat to the entire system. As the qualifications shoot, so do the danger, and Ben must overcome not only the hunters, but also a threat fall”.
As fun as it was the RNIE version, it dropped many of the most serious parts of the book to focus on making a typical action film of the 80s. But the novel was quite bleak and some would say, Prescient: it is carried out in an American author where the economy has collapsed, a few elite accumulations, all resources are scarce and the government uses propaganda, draconian censorship and reality silence.
This is something really dark, and it will be interesting to see how much it presents in the real movie. I have great hopes: Edgar Wright has said that he liked the original film, but wished the book would have received a better adaptation. And this version has a much broader reach than the original: where it was established in a single city, version 2025 is a flight through the country.
The man running It will be launched in theaters on November 7, 2025.
