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

In a year marked by numerous screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work, Edgar Wright, director of The Running Man, discusses with King the themes of media manipulation, the appeal of genre, and how reality increasingly mirrors fiction since the novella’s creation.

The Running Man: A Dystopian Vision of 2025

Originally published in 1982, The Running Man imagines a grim future where a government-controlled TV network soothes the public with a violent gameshow. King wrote the story a decade earlier under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It gained more recognition in 1985 when included in The Bachman Books, alongside other novellas such as Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), and Roadwork (1981).

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

This tagline from the original book jacket underscored the bleak premise of the story’s setting.

The 1987 Film and the New Adaptation

Two years after the compendium’s release, the story was loosely adapted into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards. While it retained the deadly gameshow concept, the film diverged significantly from King’s original plot. Despite Hollywood’s slow pace, it is remarkable that Edgar Wright’s new, more faithful adaptation is premiering in the very year the novel predicted—2025.

Reflection on Time and Reality

King notes the challenge of envisioning 2025 when he first wrote the novella, remarking how distant and unclear that future once seemed. Now, half a century later, many elements of his dystopian vision feel chillingly familiar.

Author’s summary: Stephen King and Edgar Wright explore how The Running Man's dystopian vision of 2025 surprisingly aligns with today’s reality, emphasizing media’s powerful influence and genre storytelling’s lasting impact.

BFI — 2025-11-07