Stephen King Backs The Running Man's New Ending, Calls It Faithful Enough
Stephen King is all-in on Edgar Wright’s The Running Man remake, embracing a bold new ending that veers from his 1982 Richard Bachman novel.
Edgar Wright is remaking The Running Man, and yes, Stephen King has seen what Wright is cooking. The author not only signed off on it, he pretty much fist-pumped in email form — even with Wright changing the ending from the original story. If that sentence made your eyebrows go up, same.
King’s reaction: short, sweet, and very much a yes
Before the film’s New York Comic-Con panel, Wright told Variety he emailed King to ask if he could share his thoughts publicly. King gave the go-ahead — and then some.
'Like it? I love it! It’s faithful enough to the book to keep the fans happy, but different enough to make it exciting for me.'
Worth calling out: Wright is not doing a page-for-page copy. He’s got a different ending than the book, and King is still thrilled. That’s not nothing.
Quick refresher: why King wasn’t into the 1987 movie
King has had plenty of adaptations he likes, but the Arnold Schwarzenegger version of The Running Man wasn’t one of them. In his book The Importance of Being Bachman, he spells out why: Ben Richards, as written, is not a muscle-bound wrecking ball. He’s a regular, desperate guy — poor, sickly, pushed into a lethal game show to save his family. The original movie reimagined that as a big, loud action spectacle with Arnie mowing through bad guys, which nuked the grounded, claustrophobic tension King built on the page. In his own words, Ben was 'scrawny' and 'pre-tubercular' — pretty much the opposite of the 80s action-god version.
What Wright is doing differently this time
Wright told SFX (via GamesRadar) that his version leans as much on suspense as it does on action. The idea is not to turn Ben Richards into a superhero, but to keep him human — a man trying not to be noticed in a system designed to crush him. Wright even nodded to two decades of hyper-stylized action (from the Hong Kong influence to Kill Bill to John Wick, and yes, his own movies) and said this story is a chance to strip things back to something more relatable. Translation: less operatic gun-fu, more sweat-in-your-palms paranoia.
The essentials
- Director: Edgar Wright
- Based on: Stephen King’s 1982 novel written as Richard Bachman
- Lead: Glen Powell as Ben Richards
- Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin
- Runtime: 2h 13m
- Release date: November 14, 2025
- Note for book readers: Wright’s take features a different ending than the original story
Bottom line
King’s on board. Wright’s dialing down the superhero swagger and dialing up the dread. Glen Powell’s in the crosshairs. If you bounced off the 1987 version, this one sounds like it might actually feel like The Running Man.
How do you think Wright and Powell’s The Running Man will end? I have guesses, but I want to hear yours.