Edgar Wright Addresses Development of Running Man Remake

Over two years ago fan-favorite director Edgar Wright was revealed to be attached to a new adaptation of Stephen King's The Running Man. In the time since then the Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz filmmaker has become attached to a few other projects as well, leaving this one perhaps in the fust. Speaking in a new interview however with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Wright was asked about a couple of the movies he's become attached to, including the remakes of Barbarella and The Running Man. Speaking about the later, Wright confirmed it's still in the works and offered a tease about where his movie might be different from the version released 1987.

"I think in this day and age as well is like in terms of like, you know I think when remakes are done well is if there's something else to add or there's a different take on it," Wright teased. "So I think the problem is sometimes recently like remakes are just kind of facsimiles of the original film and I don't really get that excited about a lot of them because they feel like sort of karaoke versions of the originals. Obviously back in like the '70s and '80s you had ones where they were additive like Philip Kauffman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers or John Carpenter's The Thing or David Cronenberg's The Fly; it's taking something and and doing something interesting with it.'

"In terms of like things that I've been (doing), like you know, The Running Man which is something that is in active development. Why is that interesting to me? I like the film but I like the book more and they didn't really adapt the book. Even as a teenager when I saw the Schwarzenegger film I was like, 'Oh this isn't like the book at all,' and I think nobody's adapted that book. So when that came up I was thinking you know and Simon Kinberg says 'Do you have any interest in The Running Man?' I said, 'You know what I've often thought that that book is is something like crying out to be adapted.' Now that doesn't mean that it's easy but like it is something that we are working on, yes, I'll say that much."

Originally released as one of King's "Richard Bachman" books, the story is set in a dystopian world where contestants can enter to appear on the TV show "The Running Man" where they must elude police and authorities for an extended amount of time. If they're successful they'll take home a huge cash prize, but for a month's time they'll be hunted by men with shoot to kill orders. The original film was directed by Paul Michael Glaser with Schwarzenegger in the lead role and was very loosely based on the original text.

Happy Sad Confused podcast.