The difference between Paul Michael Glaser and Edgar Wright’s adaptations of The Running Man is night and day.
Glaser’s 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger represents an incredibly loose translation of the 1982 dystopian novel by Stephen King (written under the author’s edgier Richard Bachman pseudonym), in which down-on-his-luck family man Ben Richards takes part in the titular game show, which promises untold riches if he can stay alive for 30 days straight.
Wright’s 2025 stab at the source material, on the other hand, adheres much closer to the book in loving fashion, hitting almost every major plot beat King put down on the page. Of course, the biggest deviation arrives at the very end.
The novel concludes when Richards, having nothing left to lose after learning his wife and infant child were murdered, pilots an airplane directly into the Games Network building. In the latest adaptation, however, The Running Man producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) attempts to paint Richards (Glen Powell) as the villain by cooking up an fake video of the contestant threatening to commit mass murder before redirecting the plane to the building and shooting it out of the sky.
Ben survives, reunites with his family, and becomes a figurehead of resistance against the system.
Why Edgar Wright changed Stephen King’s original ending for The Running Man
“We wanted to do something different,” Wright, who co-wrote the script with Michael Bacall, explained to Empire for the magazine’s June 2026 issue. “We wanted him to be the spark of the revolution. That was in the first draft.”
As for Ben’s revenge against the Games Network, it’s not hard to see why the original denouement was never feasible.
“We were never going to do the ending from the book,” explained the director. “It obviously has real-life parallels with a horrific real-life tragedy. We through it’d be in incredibly poor taste to evoke 9/11. That was not ever a discussion. But in the original draft, we did do the thing where [Ben’s wife and daughter] Sheila and Cathy passed away. But to be honest, as soon as you cast actors in those roles, I don’t think I could have done it, even if it had been in the script. Like, this is too brutal.”
The Running Man (2025) is now streaming on Paramount+ alongside the 1987 version.
