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One of our most anticipated fall releases here at \/Film is “The Running Man,” directed by Edgar Wright and based on the 1982 novel by Stephen King. Like this year’s other big Stephen King movie, “The Long Walk,”<\/a> “The Running Man” takes place in a future where survival is turned into a contest.<\/p>\n Ben Richards (Powell) has a sick daughter, so he takes a chance at a reality TV show contest where the prize is $1 billion dollars. The stakes of the contest, though, are life and death: To get the money, Richards has to survive for 30 days while being hunted by people all over the world. Evading detection when everyone’s screen has your face on it? Good luck! And just as Richards’ survival skills are being tested, “The Running Man” is going to test just how much of a movie\/action star Glen Powell really is<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wright isn’t the first director to make “The Running Man” into a film. The book was adapted to the screen in 1987, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Richards and directed by Paul Michael Glaser. However, Wright resists labeling his movie as a “remake” of the ’87 version.<\/p>\n Speaking to Empire magazine<\/a>, Wright emphasized: “I felt that nobody needs, or wants, a straight remake of the 1987 film, but the source material had not been wholly adapted.” Indeed, the ’87 film is noted to be a loose adaptation. It turned a satirical story into more of a typical Arnold action flick (and King wasn’t the biggest fan<\/a>). Wright wants to bring King’s own story to the big screen and, according to Wright himself, his and Michael Bacall’s “The Running Man” script earned King’s approval.<\/p>\n It might sound pedantic to stress that Wright’s “The Running Man” isn’t really a remake, but I think it’s an important distinction. If you’re adapting a story that’s already been adapted, you’re not really remaking that prior adaptation … or are you?<\/p>\n