bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

James Mottram

Numerologists would surely have a field day, but it feels apt that 2025 has become the year of Stephen King.
Maybe that statement feels redundant. Seemingly every year, there is a new adaptation of one of the myriad books written by the author, a man whose chilling stories have brought us films like Carrie, The Shining and Misery.
But this year, in cinemas, we have already seen The Monkey, The Life of Chuck and The Long Walk, and on television, The Institute and IT: Welcome to Derry.
Now it is the turn of The Running Man, the second feature film to be inspired by King’s novella, written in the early 1970s but first published in 1982, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.


Curiously, the original setting is right now. A blurb on the jacket read: “Welcome to America in 2025, when the best men don’t run for President. They run for their lives…”
Set in an alternate America plagued by spy-cams and brutal law enforcement, there is something satisfying about this story returning to cinemas in the very year King mania hits its peak.
When we meet with King over Zoom for this interview, he is joined by Edgar Wright, the 51-year-old British director of this new version, which stars Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) as down-on-his-luck construction worker Ben Richards.
Taking place in a world where a government-controlled television network runs a series of twisted game shows, Richards auditions for The Running Man, in which contestants must survive for 30 days on the streets.

The longer they live, the more money they make, as hitmen and eager vigilantes hunt them to the death, in what is a compelling swipe at our reality television-immersed lives.
Sitting at his computer in front of a huge semicircular fish tank, King seems delighted by Wright’s energetic take, more so than the previous 1987 movie, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger played Richards as a wrongly imprisoned police officer.
“I mean, the thing about Arnold as Ben Richards was he looked like he worked out four times a day and drank all the energy drinks and took the vitamins and everything,” the bespectacled 78-year-old says.
“He just looked pumped and ripped and anything else you’d want to say. And Glen looks like a guy. A handsome guy, but still a guy, you know? And I love that.”

Wright, the filmmaker behind Baby Driver and Hot Fuzz, nods in agreement. “I think what’s happening in a lot of action these days is a lot of characters are already the best at what they do. So John Wick is the best hitman ever. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac, but he was the greatest assassin ever.
“The thing about Ben Richards, in the book at least, is that he’s a guy off the street. He’s not a trained killer and he’s not a superhero. And so hopefully the net result in the movie is that you think, ‘How can this guy possibly win?’”
Wright first came across King’s book when he was in his mid-teens, reading it as part of The Bachman Books compendium, a set of four novellas released in 1985. Two years later, he saw the Schwarzenegger film and was surprised by just how different they were.
“They didn’t adapt the book at all,” he says. “It always stuck with me.” The idea of producing a more faithful screen version of the book never left him. However, he maintains it was entirely kismet that producer Simon Kinberg suggested he be the ideal director to adapt it.

King, who calls Wright his “angel” on this project, first became aware of the director when his feature debut, 2004’s zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, was released. The two began an email correspondence, although they only met for the first time recently.
It is not hard to see that they are well-suited, with Wright’s body of work as pulpily entertaining as King’s. As Wright notes, his work in genre cinema is a means to “smuggle something personal in there at the same time”, something that could easily be applied to King’s work.
Scripting with Michael Bacall – who previously wrote Wright’s 2010 action-comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – Wright was not afraid to nod to the 1987 movie in the way some directors would be. An amusing aside, in a film full of them, sees Schwarzenegger’s face on a dollar bill.
“I have to give credit to Mr Schwarzenegger himself, but he approved that image,” Wright says. “I think maybe in this alternate 2025 … people not born in America can run for president. He was already the governor of California, and in this reality, he became president as well.”

The world King creates is a terrifying and bloodthirsty one, where human life is expendable. What is remarkable is how prescient he was about the vile nature of reality television, something King had little idea about when he began writing.
“This was before reality shows,” he says. “So I didn’t know anything about that. My idea of a reality show was [music programme] American Bandstand.” Even so, the idea of a world where deadly contests are the norm was already uppermost in his mind.
“I’ve been down that road before with The Long Walk,” he says, alluding to his 1979 novella. Adapted this year into a feature by director Francis Lawrence, it is another tale set in an alternate, totalitarian United States, where a gruelling walking contest is held in which participants are shot dead if they fail to keep pace.
But when he penned The Running Man, King felt its horrifying titular show was more plausible: “That possibly they would really hunt people down on TV.” Ironically, that came true, albeit without the killing, on shows like Hunted, as members of the public try to outsmart law enforcers.

In the film, The Running Man is a way to pacify the masses living in choked-up urban hellholes riddled with radiation, with little concern for the lives of the contestants.
“There’s a certain numbness that sets in among the audience where it doesn’t care,” King says. “You’re just watching these things, and they’re like actors.
“Ben Richards is a real guy who has real problems. He’s obviously had some problems at work, and his baby is sick … but to the show, he’s just a pawn to be moved around and he’s part of the ratings game. I mean, it’s a nasty world we live in.”
An author who is frequently outspoken about US President Donald Trump on social media, King’s predictions about a totalitarian state, where fake news has become a way of controlling the masses, now feel dangerously on point.

George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four was always his touchstone, with its depiction of a political party that believes “ignorance is strength”. But in the era of Fox News and the like, his message about modern-day media is just as potent as Orwell’s.
“Never mind if it’s entertaining you,” King says. “What’s it doing to you?”
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook


Who plays Stranger Things’ Karen Wheeler? Meet prolific actress Cara Buono

Want to find solace in film? 10 movies that may offer catharsis and hope

Oscar-winning UK playwright Tom Stoppard dies aged 88

How Daniel Craig has evolved detective Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out series

American cinema

What Stephen King, Edgar Wright think about The Running Man and its prescient 2025 vision

Glen Powell (centre) in a still from The Running Man. Stephen King and Edgar Wright talk about the original novel, the 1987 film and its latest iteration. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Colman Domingo in a still from The Running Man. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Edgar Wright (right) and Glen Powell attend the premiere of The Running Man in Manhattan, New York, on November 9, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Michael Cera in a still from The Running Man. Photo: Paramount Pictures

A still from The Running Man. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Josh Brolin (left) and director Edgar Wright on the set of The Running Man. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Glen Powell in a still from The Running Man. Photo: Paramount Pictures

10 of the best animated films set in the afterlife, from Grave of the Fireflies to Soul

A screen grab from Soul, starring Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey, one of 10 animated films focusing on the afterlife. Photo: Disney/Pixar

How Netflix’s Ballad of a Small Player with Colin Farrell was inspired by Macau, Hong Kong

Colin Farrell in a still from Ballad of a Small Player. In Netflix’s new film, the actor stars opposite Tilda Swinton as an unhinged gambler running through the casinos of Macau, and occasionally escaping to Hong Kong. Photo: Netflix

Ballad of a Small Player actors (from left) Fala Chen, Colin Farrell and director Edward Berger at a special screening of the film at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood, on October 14, 2025. Photo: AP

Colin Farrell in a still from Ballad of a Small Player. Photo: Netflix

Tilda Swinton in a still from Ballad of a Small Player. Photo: Netflix

Edward Berger and Fala Chen on the set of Ballad of a Small Player. Photo: Netflix

How Another World, a dark Hong Kong animated feature film, turned grief into glory

Yuri (left, voiced by Christy Choi) and the spirit Gudo (Chung Suet-ying) in a screen grab from Another World, a new Hong Kong animation written and produced by Polly Yeung and directed by Tommy Ng. Photo: Edko Films

Yuri in a screen grab from Another World. Photo: Edko Films

Another World director Tommy Ng (front) takes a group photo with the film’s crew, including writer-producer Polly Yeung (front row, second left), at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France in June 2025. Photo: Edko Films

The character Gudo, otherwise known as “Ghostie” in Cantonese, in a screen grab from Another World. Photo: Edko Films

A screen grab from Another World. Photo: Edko Films

Polly Yeung is the creator and writer-producer of the Hong Kong animation film Another World. Photo: Edko Films

Cecilia Cheung: Hong Kong actress, sex scandal victim and Chinese social media star

Cecilia Cheung at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards in 2004. The actress’ personal life garnered a lot of attention in the 2000s, with tabloids covering scandals and her high-profile romantic life. Photo: SCMP

Cheung in 1999. Photo: Oliver Tsang

Cheung speaks after receiving the award for best new performer, as veteran actors Liza Wang and Danny Lee look on, at the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2000. Photo: Martin Chan

Cheung and Nicholas Tse in 2001. Photo: Reuters

Cheung in a still from Lost in Time (2003), for which she won best actress at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards. Photo: China Star Entertainment Group

Cheung and Tse at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2011, the year they filed for divorce. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Cheung and Stephen Chow in a still from King of Comedy (1999). Her feature-film debut remains one of her most memorable roles. Photo: The Star Overseas

Cheung and her three sons. Photo: Weibo

Cheung in a photo she posted on her Weibo account in 2023. Photo: Weibo

Lifestyle

Entertainment

Culture

Film & TV

The author of the original story and the director of the latest movie talk to the Post about Arnold Schwarzenegger, reality shows and media


The author of the original story and the director of the latest movie talk to the Post about Arnold Schwarzenegger, reality shows and media.
