Edgar Wright's Adaptation of Stephen King's THE RUNNING MAN Could Shoot Next Year
A few years ago, it was announced that Edgar Wright would be writing and directing a new film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man. Now in a recent update from producer Simon Kinberg, we learn that the movie is still in development and that it might start shooting next year.
During an interview with /Film, Kinberg offered an update on the project saying: “[Wright is] one of my favorite directors of all time and one of my favorite people, just a super great guy. Obviously a cinephile. We are working on it actively. He’s actively working on the script with Michael Bacall. And our hope would be that it is a movie that, again, all fingers crossed and luck and everything else go our way, that Edgar could maybe direct next year.”
He went on to say: “Well, what’s cool is that Edgar, completely separately, before myself and Paramount started down the journey of figuring out how to get the remake rights, which was complicated, he had tweeted, just on his own — and I follow him obviously on every possible platform — he had tweeted that if there was one movie he would remake ever, it was Running Man.”
The story takes place in the United States in the year 2025, which sees the economy in ruins and violence dramatically escalating, It’s said that this new version of the film will stay more faithful to the source material. Here’s a description of the story:
Ben Richards is a desperate man. With no job, no money, no way out, and a young daughter in need of proper medical attention, he must turn to the only possibility of striking it rich in this near-future dystopian America: participating in the ultra-violent TV programming of the government-sanctioned Games Network. Ben soon finds himself selected as a contestant on the biggest and the best that the Games Network has to offer: “The Running Man,” a no-holds-barred thirty-day struggle to stay alive as public enemy number one, relentlessly hunted by an elite strike force bent on killing him as quickly as possible in front of an audience all-too eager to see that happen. It means a billion dollars in prize money if he can live for the next month. No one has ever survived longer than eight days. But desperation can push a person do things they never thought possible—and Ben Richards is willing to go the distance in this ultimate game of life and death....
Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim) wrote the script from a story he co-wrote with Wright. Simon Kinberg (X-Men, Dark Phoenix) and Audrey Chon will produce the film.