The Running Man Ending Explained: How The Film Flips Ben’s Fate From Stephen King’s Novel

Spoilers ahead for The Running Man (2025). Big, final-scene spoilers.

Edgar Wright finally took a swing at Stephen King’s The Running Man, and yes, the movie ditches the book’s infamous ending. Not because Wright chickened out, but because the original is basically unfilmable now without immediately echoing 9/11. That’s the uncomfortable, practical reality shaping this adaptation, and it drives everything about how the third act plays.

Why the book’s ending was never going to make it to screen

King’s 1982 novel wraps with Ben Richards stealing a plane and deliberately flying it straight into the Network’s skyscraper headquarters, taking out the people who destroyed his life. It’s a vicious, memorable capper — and also one that now reads way too close to real-world tragedy. You can’t stage that in 2025 without the movie becoming about something it never intended to be about. Wright clearly knew that and steered the story somewhere else.

What the movie does instead (and how it still nods to King)

The film keeps a surprising amount of the book’s late-game machinery and then swerves at the last second. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) still rockets from nobody to must-see gladiator. He still hijacks a car, grabs a hostage, demands a private plane. He even kills lead Hunter Evan McCone and the flight crew, frees his hostage with a parachute, and lines up for a kamikaze hit on the Network tower — the book’s setup, beat for beat.

Here’s the pivot: the Network seizes his plane via autopilot and brands Ben a terrorist on live TV. The government, buying the lie or playing along, orders the shoot-down. A missile slams the aircraft before it can reach the building. The movie freeze-frames on the explosion — and for a moment, it looks like Wright just wrote Richards out of existence.

Then the film yanks the rug: a rebel broadcast cuts in to reveal that Ben most likely escaped the aircraft. The final scene jumps forward to a low-key, almost cheeky epilogue — Ben reunites with his family outside a grocery store, grabbing socks for his daughter. He’s alive, not a martyr, and very much a symbol. It’s a deliberate inversion of King’s tragic full-stop, redesigned to land with a defiant, hopeful beat instead of a fireball.

The theme shift: from celebrity takedown to full-on uprising

King’s book is razor-focused on how TV fame and spectacle warp truth. Wright keeps that thread but cranks the dial toward revolution. The Network and its brass aren’t complex or conflicted; they’re openly monstrous — lying, killing, and manipulating to keep the machine running. Dan Killian, the show’s slick ringmaster, collapses the second the system wobbles. There’s also Amelia, who starts out normalized to the cruelty and slowly wakes up as the bodies pile up. Her arc turns the movie into a mirror: where do you draw your own line inside a rotten system?

All of that shifts The Running Man from a satire about celebrity worship into a rallying cry. The message isn’t subtle: if the system is corrupt, fight it. That’s a sharper, more contemporary pitch — and it explains why Wright trades King’s nihilism for a rebel victory lap.

Quick specs you might want

• Title: The Running Man (2025)
• Director: Edgar Wright
• Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin
• Runtime: 2h 13m
• IMDb score (at launch): 6.8/10
• Release: In theaters today, November 14, 2025

So, does the new ending work?

Given the context, yeah — it’s the only lane that makes sense. Swapping a suicide strike for a state-sanctioned shoot-down keeps the stakes high without dragging the film into the wrong conversation. The freeze-frame fake-out is showy, the rebel broadcast is a nice touch, and the grocery-store button — socks and all — is weirdly perfect for Wright’s tone: dry, pointed, and just human enough to sting.

Curious where you land on it. Does the rebellious spin beat King’s bleak mic drop, or would you rather the movie stuck the original, unfilmable landing?