The following contains heavy spoilers for 2025’s The Running Man.Edgar Wright, co-writer and director of this year’s dystopian action film The Running Man, reveals the real reason the film’s ending was changed from Stephen King’s 1982 novel. While the film doesn’t end with the best outcome for reality TV star Ben Richards, it does provide an uplifting conclusion to the tale of the revolutionary survivor. Those familiar with the book will know that King’s original story had a much more disturbing conclusion – a part of the story that Wright always knew he would have to change when adapting it.
Wright recently spoke with ComingSoon, following the film’s recent digital release. The director talked about the intense production and working alongside action star Glen Powell:
“Glen is probably the nicest, most responsible kind of actor you could ever hope to work with, and not just as an actor — he’s brilliant … Actually, for me and Michael [Bacall] having Glen around as a collaborator who’s also a great writer as well is really, really fantastic because he has really good ideas.”
The writer-director also discussed the ending and how it distances itself from the book’s much bleaker conclusion. In the book, contestant Ben Richards sacrifices himself by flying a plane into a tower and killing producer Dan Killian – an ending that Wright says paralleled the real-life event “that happened after the book was published.” It was an ending he always knew would need to be modified when taking King’s work to the big screen:
“We never intended to do the ending for the book. And I’d say there’s obviously a real-world parallel that happened after the book was published, which I think would make it in very poor taste to do the ending from the book. For I think very obvious reasons. So we knew right from the start, even before we’d started working on the treatment, that we weren’t gonna do that. And the idea was, well, what if we alluded to it in the sense of this is something that they’re going to frame him for?
“Really, I guess without giving too much away about the ending of the book or the film, it was like, we weren’t gonna have the same fire, but what if we had the spark of the revolution, kept that. So that was the idea. It’s something that still keeps the revenge element, but also kind of has a more hopeful feel, like the start of a new movement.”
Did Stephen King Agree With the Changes to ‘The Running Man’?
Plenty of Stephen King novels have had changes made when translated to the big screen. The change in the remake of Pet Sematary was effective, even if the trailer spoiled the entire thing. The first adaptation of The Running Man didn’t have much to do with King’s original book, and The Shining is also a good example of how to fully reimagine a great book into a better movie.
When it comes to endings, many adaptations have seen major modifications, and almost all of them actually work. One of the earliest to undergo a major change was Cujo, as the film didn’t feature a shocking character death. Recent examples include The Mist and The Long Walk, which offered unexpected changes in the conclusion, and they were extremely shocking to viewers. In almost every case, King has had to approve changes of this nature, and The Running Man was no different. Wright adds:
“To be honest, Stephen King, because he kind of has to sign off on the adaptation, he really liked the fact that we changed it, because I think he wasn’t expecting us to do the ending from the book either, and actually was glad that we didn’t.
“So it’s funny sometimes, I think people say, ‘Why don’t you do the ending from the book?’ And I was thinking, ‘Well, I think it’s pretty obvious why we didn’t,’ and I don’t think that actually, in 2025, to have something as bleak and nihilistic as maybe not what we need right now. I think we need like, that crack of light, even if it’s a very angry light.”
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