1987 film’s merged host-producer is The Running Man’s best change

Polygon says the 2025 remake of The Running Man is more faithful to Stephen King’s 1982 novel and builds a fuller dystopian world, but the outlet argues the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film made one change that improves on both the book and the new film. The original novel, published under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, depicts a future of extreme inequality where Ben Richards enters a televised hunt to earn a billion dollars if he survives 30 days while network-hired “Hunters” and the public try to kill or report him; the 2025 film follows that premise closely and stages several action sequences in which Glen Powell’s Richards is cornered by hunters.

By contrast, the 1987 movie recasts Richards as a police captain who must last three hours in an enclosed “Game Zone,” a limitation the article says loses the book’s most compelling element: a contestant on the run in the real world. The review highlights the films’ shared flaws—both open with abrupt, exposition-filled scenes that leave the lead underdeveloped—but singles out the 1987 picture’s bold change: merging the producer character with the show host into Damon Killian.

That turn, played by Richard Dawson (then the long-running host of Family Feud), made the villain unexpectedly charming and deceptive; in the 2025 film the producer Dan Killian, played by Josh Brolin, is faithful to the book but does not elevate the material, and Bobby Thompson is played by Colman Domingo.

Key Topics

Culture, Stephen King, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, Josh Brolin, Glen Powell