Edgar Wright is ready to play the most dangerous game: adapting a Stephen King novel. According to Deadline, the Baby Driver filmmaker has signed on to direct a new adaptation of The Running Man, King’s 1982 novel published under his well-known pseudonym Richard Bachman, for Paramount Pictures. He’ll co-write the feature, reportedly a “much more faithful†adaptation of the book, with Michael Bacall, the screenwriter behind films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, also directed by Wright, and both Jump Street movies.
Of course, The Running Man has already been adapted into one film, the 1987 sci-fi action flick of the same name, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, Maria Conchita Alonso, and Jesse Venture. The film follows Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards, who is forced to compete on a hellish game show where he must flee armed hunters sent to kill “runners†for the enjoyment of the audience at home.
According to Deadline, Wright said back in 2017 that “if he could remake any film, he would choose†The Running Man, so a remake feels like a perfect project. Plus, if The Running Man was an actual TV show, you just know it would be constantly rebooted. It’d be the Wipeout of the dystopian near future.