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Edgar Wright is ready to play the most dangerous game: adapting a Stephen King novel. According to the deadline, the Baby driver filmmaker signed a contract to direct a new adaptation of The running man, King’s 1982 novel published under his well-known pseudonym Richard Bachman, by Paramount Pictures. He will co-write the feature, supposedly a “much more faithful” adaptation of the book, with Michael Bacall, the screenwriter behind films like Scott Pilgrim against the world, also directed by Wright, and both Jump Street films.
It is clear, The running man has already been adapted for a film, the 1987 science fiction action film of the same name, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, Maria Conchita Alonso and Jesse Venture. The film follows Ben Richards of Schwarzenegger, who is forced to compete in a hellish game show in which he must kill armed flea hunters to kill “runners” for the amusement of the audience at home.
According to Deadline, Wright said in 2017 that “if he could remake any film, he would choose” The running man, so a remake looks like a perfect project. In addition, if The running man it was a real TV show, you just know it would be constantly restarted. It would be the Destroy dystopian near future.