Stephen King in conversation with Edgar Wright: “When I wrote The Running Man, 2025 seemed so far in the future that I couldn’t even grasp it in my mind”

Stephen King in Conversation with Edgar Wright

Reflecting on The Running Man and Media Manipulation

In a remarkable year filled with screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work, Edgar Wright, director of The Running Man, discusses the enduring themes of the dystopian thriller with the author. The story centers on a brutal TV gameshow used by a government-controlled network to pacify the public.

“Welcome to America in 2025 when the best men don’t run for president. They run for their lives…”

This tagline originally appeared on the book jacket of King’s The Running Man, published in 1982 but written a decade earlier under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. The novella gained greater recognition in 1985 when included in The Bachman Books, a collection of early works including Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), and Roadwork (1981).

Adaptations and Cultural Impact

In 1987, Paul Michael Glaser directed a loose film adaptation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, the everyman hero from King’s story.
Though the 1987 version retained only the concept of a deadly gameshow, Edgar Wright’s new adaptation is much more faithful to the original novella.
The timing is striking: Wright’s film is released in 2025, the very year King originally envisioned as the story’s future setting.

Author’s Reflection

“When I wrote The Running Man, 2025 seemed so far in the future that I couldn’t even grasp it in my mind,”

King reflects, highlighting how reality has caught up to his speculative fiction over the past fifty years.

Summary

Stephen King and Edgar Wright explore how The Running Man predicted media-driven dystopia decades ahead, with Wright’s faithful 2025 adaptation illustrating the blurred line between fiction and reality.

BFI — 2025-11-07