The Running Man: Edgar Wright to direct remake of the Stephen King novel
February 19, 2021 by:
While we have yet to see Edgar Wright s COVID-delayed genre film
Last Night in Soho, the fan-favorite filmmaker has lined up his next project. Wright will team with Paramount Pictures and producers Simon Kinberg and Audrey Chon through Genre Films, with Nira Park from Wright s Complete Fiction studio, for an updated take on Stephen King s novel
Previously filmed in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role, this new film will not be a remake but a more faithful adaptation of King s book written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.
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Schwarzenegger classic -“Shout it from the highest steeple, let it out to all the people”!- “The Running Man” is getting a do-over courtesy of Cornetto Trilogy helmer Edgar Wright at Paramount.
Wright has teamed with “X-Men” alum Simon Kinberg to develop a second film adaptation of Stephen King’s (as Richard Bachman) futuristic novel. This will apparently be more closer in tone to the book than the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson.
Wright will co-write the story with Michael Bacall, who will also pen the script.
Kinberg produces via his Genre Films banner, alongside Nira Park from Wright’s Complete Fiction banner, and Genre Films’ Audrey Chon.
Although we’re still waiting on Edgar Wright’s
Last Night In Soho, delayed by the general pandemic-ness of it all, to finally arrive in theaters, the
The Sparks Brothers director has just added a new movie to his ever-packed slate of future projects: A new adaptation of Stephen King’s grim game show satire
The Running Man.
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The Running Man has, of course, already been adapted to the screen before. In 1987, Paul Michael Glaser re-imagined the book’s scrawny everyman scrapper Ben Richards as Arnold Schwarzenegger at his kill-and-quippiest, and transformed the premise of the original released under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, where all his darkest impulses in the 1980s tended to find purchase from a nationwide manhunt into a series of gladiator matches stocked with cut-rate supervillains played by a variety of pro wrestlers, former footballers, and one genuine opera singer. Per
Edgar Wright Will Direct a New Version of Stephen King’s THE RUNNING MAN for Paramount
Edgar Wright will helm a new version of Stephen King s THE RUNNING MAN for Paramount! By Josh Millican
Shaun of the Dead) will be helming a new adaptation of
The Running Man for Paramount.
The Running Man was previously released as a feature film in 1987; that version was directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Check out the trailer and synopsis for 1987’s
Running Man below.
Synopsis:
In the year 2019, America is a totalitarian state where the favorite television program is “The Running Man” a game show in which prisoners must run to freedom to avoid a brutal death. Having been made a scapegoat by the government, an imprisoned Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has the opportunity to make it back to the outside again by being a contestant on the deadly show, although the twisted host