Glen Powell’s new version of The Running Man has sparked discussion after the film got off to a sluggish start at the box office.
Paramount Pictures released director Edgar Wright’s movie over the weekend, and it opened in second place at the domestic box office with $16.5 million for a lackluster global sum of $28 million. The dystopian action film adapts Stephen King’s 1982 novel of the same name that previously served as the basis for director Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 movie version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Steven E. de Souza, who wrote the 1987 feature, tells The Hollywood Reporter that some of the reviews for the new one remind him of critical response that dinged the Schwarzenegger movie’s ending. De Souza, who has an additional literary material credit on Wright’s film, notes that he has read the script but not yet seen the finished product. The 1987 movie collected $38 million at the box office ($109 million today).
“I read it and [felt that] on paper, they got the ending working,” de Souza says of the new film. “Even the reviews that love it say it stumbles at the end. It seems to me that this time around, something went wrong between the page and the stage again.”
The screenwriter notes that the adaptations have been tasked with finding ways to lighten the ending from King’s source material. “The book’s ending is a downer, so you need a new ending,” says de Souza, who is also known for penning such projects as 48 Hrs. and Die Hard. “I would say that both the ’87 version and this version tweak the ending in pretty much the same way, except that in our version, we had less money, so it’s a little simpler.” He quips, “Maybe the third version in 2045 will stick the landing.”
De Souza says he has read analysis detailing perceived reasons why the new film may have underperformed in its opening, including that the crowd skewed heavily male. THR’s chief film critic David Rooney wrote in his review of Powell’s The Running Man that the movie “has no shortage of action and adrenaline” but “ends up feeling hollow.” It holds a 65 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
“What people are saying is there was very little in the marketing here that would appeal to women,” de Souza says. “There definitely is some validity to that. Science-fiction always skews male.”
De Souza finds it heartening that reactions to the movie have included people sharing their favorite moments from both the 1987 feature and the Powell version. “I was totally rooting for it because I figured the more people see this movie, [then they] will want to go out and rent the old one, just for comparison’s sakes,” he says. “So, win-win.”
The screenwriter adds that he finds himself surprised whenever creatives are unhappy about their older projects getting rebooted: “That’s a reaction I can’t understand. I would never be upset.”
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