Paramount Pictures announced Glen Powell as the lead for the upcoming ‘Running Man’ adaptation directed by Edgar Wright in April. Powell recently talked about the project with USA Today and said it would be better than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s version. He explained:
“I’ve been an Edgar Wright fan my whole life, and talking to him about ‘Running Man,’ what’s been really incredible is his take on it. It’s very much not the original [Arnold] Schwarzenegger flick, it’s much more grounded in the Stephen King [novella] version.”
The Original Film Was A Loose Adaptation
Paul Michael Glaser directed the script written by Steven E. de Souza for the 1987’s loose adaptation. Schwarzenegger played a criminal competing for freedom in a deadly game show.
The film took place in a 2017 setting unlike the book which was in 2025. The original cast included Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Dawson.
Wright Is Working On A Better Remake
Edgar Wright started working on ‘The Running Man’ with Michael Bacall back in 2021. He shared what made him come up with a remake idea in a chat on the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast:
“Why is [‘The Running Man’] interesting to me? It’s like, I like the film, but I like the book more, and they didn’t really adapt the book. Even as a teenager, when I saw the Schwarzenegger film, I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t like the book at all!’ And I think, ‘Nobody’s done that book.'”
The director went on:
“So, when that came up, I was thinking, and [producer] Simon Kinberg says, ‘Do you have any interest in ‘The Running Man?” I said, ‘You know what? I’ve often thought that that book is something crying out to be adapted.’ Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy! But it’s something that we are working on, yes. I’ll tell you that much.”
There’s no release date announced for the upcoming film adaptation, right now.
