Stephen King has seen some fantastic adaptations of his work hit cinema screens in the last few years, and now it looks like The Running Man is going to be another blistering box office smash – and it has already been given a glowing review from the author himself.
King has been actively sharing his view on streaming movies, cinema releases, and more in the last few years, and he does not limit it to projects based on the work of other people. In fact, he has been brutally honest about some terrible movies adapted from his novels and short stories as well as being hugely complimentary about others.
When it comes to The Running Man, the arrival of a new trailer for Edgar Wright’s take on the 1982 dystopian novel King, written under the guise of Richard Bachman, was the perfect chance for the author to promote the film with some high praise of his own. Sharing the trailer on his X account, King added:
“BTW: I’ve seen it and it’s fantastic. DIE HARD for our time. A Bipartisan thrill ride.”
The trailers and early reactions for The Running Man have been positive so far, and for those who still remember Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campy 1980s movie based on the story, this is a very different take and there is no reason why both versions cannot live in your head side by side.
‘The Running Man’ Is a “Timely” Story 40 Years After It Was Written
While there are many stories that are relevant at the time they are written, it takes a special kind of story to transcend time and still be able to fit its narrative into modern society decades later. King obviously set The Running Man in a dystopian 2025 that we are not quite living in yet, but as star Glen Powell noted recently, there is still something “eerie” about the vision of the future King created.
“Even since we shot the movie, it has become more and more timely. It is unbelievable how Stephen King saw the future of 2025, the year that we are in right now, and how eerie it is to see where we are living and what it looks like, and how similar it is to all the events that are happening in this book.
“This movie is obviously just cinematic escapism, and it’s fun and people are going to absolutely see it as just a blast of a movie experience, but what is incredibly fun is watching Stephen King the clairvoyant, and how we get to portray that, because it comments on a lot of things happening in the world.”
The Running Man will be released in cinemas on November 14, 2025, the same day as Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, and a week before Wicked: For Good takes over theaters, the film could become a hit. With strong word of mouth, King’s name behind it, and a more mature audience as its target audience, The Running Man could bring to a close a year that has been filled with some of the best adaptations of King’s work in recent memory.