MOVIE NEWS – We received very positive news from the producer about the progress of the remake of the iconic Stephen King film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The remake of Running Man has received a very positive update. The original 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Stephen King (author name Richard Bachman). It follows a competition where criminals must fight for their lives to win the government’s pardon. The remake was announced in 2021. Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright is in the director’s chair, and Michael Bacall is writing the screenplay. It was also announced that the remake will be produced by Simon Kinberg, Audrey Chon and Nira Park.

SlashFilm recently sat down for an interview with Kinberg in honour of the new season of the sci-fi series Invasion. However, the topic of the Running Man remake was also discussed during their conversation.

Kinberg shared his excitement about working with Edgar Wright and that “we’re actively working on it,” and hinted that “Edgar might be directing next year.”

“Yeah, he’s 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… 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.”

Is the time ripe for a Schwarzenegger action-thriller remake?

Competing dystopian stories like Schwarzenegger’s version of Running Man are relatively common in the history of modern fiction. In fact, King’s 1982 book was the second time Bachman wrote about such subjects under a pseudonym after 1979’s The Long Walk. The latter followed a group of teenagers sent on a death race who are killed if their speed drops below 4mph too many times.

The stories of both novels bear some loose resemblance to an even earlier classic, Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery.”

In the years since Running Man, the specific form of the film has become even more fashionable. This is particularly evident in the success of The Hunger Games and the Japanese import Battle Royale. In these, teenagers fight against each other in a life-and-death struggle in film franchises adapted from novels. What’s more, a new Hunger Games prequel will be released in November.

A remake of Running Man could do very well on the heels of these titles. Moreover, it falls in a very fertile period of Stephen King adaptations. 2017’s It and 2019’s It Chapter Two were also among the highest-grossing films of their respective years. All this indicates that there is still great interest in older works. Other King adaptations have also received critical or commercial acclaim in the past five years.

Source: SlashFilm