How A Fun Movie Nerd Tweet Landed Edgar Wright The Running Man Remake [Exclusive]
Richard Bachman's 1982 novel "The Running Man" is set in the far-off future of 2025 when corporate America is ruling the country, people are having trouble finding work, and appearing on salacious government-run game shows seems like a viable way to make money.
Contestants in "The Running Man" are deemed to be enemies of the state and are sentenced to execution. They are then set loose and hunted by government assassins, each one outfitted with a colorful gimmick. The contestants earn $100 for every hour they stay alive, with a $100 bonus for each cop they kill. If they live for 30 days, they win a billion dollars. The public takes bets on how long the contestants will survive before their inevitable slaughter.
The 1987 feature film adaptation of "The Running Man," directed by Paul Michael Glaser and written by Steven E. de Souza, changed the premise slightly. Now set in 2017, the film sees Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) framed for a crime he didn't commit. Ben is a helicopter pilot ordered by the military to shoot unarmed civilians. When he refuses, he's railroaded. After a time on the lam, Richards is eventually forced onto the Running Man game show. The game show, in a fun casting twist, is hosted by Richard Dawson.
In February of 2021, /Film reported that energetic director Edgar Wright and producer Simon Kinberg were in the midst of a remake of "The Running Man" with screenwriter Michael Bacall ("Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "21 Jump Street"). /Film's own Ryan Scott recently sat down to interview Kinberg to get some updates, and the producer revealed that Wright managed to land the gig directing "The Running Man" because of a single tweet.
Obviously, a cinephile
In /Film's recent interview, Simon Kinberg noted that production on the remake of "The Running Man" hasn't started in earnest and that he hopes Edgar Wright could start directing as early as next year. He also revealed Wright was attempting to match himself to the material on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) long before Kinberg and the studio began looking into another "Running Man." Kinberg said:
"Well, 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.'"
Wright has made several pastiche movies, of course. His 2017 film "Baby Driver" owes a lot to Walter Hill's 1978 film "The Driver," and his celebrated Cornetto Trilogy wouldn't exist without the influence of Sam Raimi. But Wright hasn't, to date, remade a film outright (outwright?). It seems that he would, given his druthers, only remake one movie. This is it.
Kinberg noted that he has been itching to hire Wright for years, even trying to get him involved in one of his many superhero projects. It seems that this time around, the alchemy was there:
"And so when it came time [for 'The Running Man'], I was like, 'Guys, I think we could maybe get ...' And I've chased Edgar for everything. I've chased Edgar for 'X-Men' movies. I've chased him for literally every possible thing. We have talked about every movie. So yeah, this one would be a big dream."
"The Running Man" would be Wright's second science fiction film after "The World's End."