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The Running Man is a 1987 American dystopian action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto, and Jesse Ventura. The film is set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, featuring a television show where convicted criminal “runners” must escape death at the hands of professional killers. It is loosely based on the 1982 novel The Running Man written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
The Running Man was a moderate box office success in the United States, grossing $38 million on its $27 million budget, but opened to mixed reviews from critics. A new movie adaptation of the novel, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Glen Powell in the lead role, is set for release by Paramount Pictures in 2025.
Plot
By 2017, following a worldwide economic collapse and resource scarcity, the United States has become a totalitarian police state. The government maintains control through propaganda, censoring unsanctioned art, music, and communications. The most popular TV show, The Running Man, is a state-controlled game show where incarcerated criminals can earn their freedom by surviving as “runners” against lethal “stalkers”.
Captain Ben Richards is arrested after refusing orders to open fire on an unarmed food riot in Bakersfield, California. His fellow officers massacre the rioters, and Richards is framed for the incident, being dubbed the “Butcher of Bakersfield.” 18 months later, Richards escapes from a prison labor camp with two resistance fighters, Harold Weiss and William Laughlin. Although they offer him a chance to join the resistance, Richards is only interested in survival. He travels to his brother’s apartment, only to find that Amber Mendez, a composer for the state broadcaster ICS, now lives there, as his brother was taken for “re-education.”
Richards forces Amber to help him bypass airport security, but believing him to be the “Butcher,” she alerts the authorities. After his arrest, Amber sees news coverage falsely claiming Richards killed several people during the incident and begins to doubt his guilt. Meanwhile, the ruthless and narcissistic Damon Killian, host of The Running Man, recruits Richards, hoping to boost the show’s stagnant ratings. He threatens to replace Richards with Laughlin and Weiss unless he agrees to participate.
As The Running Man begins, Killian reneges on his offer and sends Richards, Weiss, and Laughlin in rocket sleds to the game zone, an abandoned part of Los Angeles divided into four quadrants. The group is stalked by Subzero, a hockey-themed assassin whom Richards kills, marking the first time a runner has killed a stalker. Meanwhile, Amber is caught accessing the unedited Bakersfield footage and is sent into the game zone. Killian then dispatches two more stalkers, the chainsaw-wielding Buzzsaw and electric-shooting Dynamo.
Richards kills Buzzsaw with his own chainsaw, though Laughlin is fatally injured. Weiss, meanwhile, discovers the satellite uplink controlling government broadcasts is inside the game zone and cracks the code for Amber to memorize before being killed by Dynamo. Richards incapacitates Dynamo but spares his life, to the audience’s shock. When Killian secretly offers him a job as a stalker, Richards furiously declines. Amber discovers the corpses of the show’s past “winners,” realizing their victories were state propaganda, and Richards kills the flamethrower-wielding Fireball. The audience begins cheering for Richards while crowds outside place bets on his success.
Richards and Amber are soon found by the resistance, led by Mic, and taken to their command center. Killian orders retired stalker Captain Freedom to face Richards, but he refuses unless he can fight him honorably without gimmicks. Instead, ICS edits existing footage to show Freedom killing Richards and Amber. Seeing this on TV, Richards realizes the government must now ensure they are not seen alive again. Using the satellite uplink codes, Mic airs an exposé of Killian’s and the government’s lies, including the unedited Bakersfield footage. At the same time, Richards leads the resistance members in a takeover of ICS to prevent the network from disabling the broadcast.
At ICS, the resistance battles the security forces as the audience flees. Dynamo attacks Amber, but she triggers the sprinkler system, electrocuting him. Richards then confronts Killian, forcing him into a rocket sled and sending him into the game zone, where the uncontrolled vehicle crashes and explodes, killing Killian. As the audience and crowds celebrate, Richards and Amber kiss as the broadcasting network goes offline.
Cast
Arnold Schwarzenegger as Captain Benjamin Stuart “Ben” Richards
María Conchita Alonso as Amber Mendez
Yaphet Kotto as William Laughlin
Jim Brown as Fireball
Jesse Ventura as Captain Freedom
Erland Van Lidth as Dynamo
Marvin J. McIntyre as Harold Weiss
Gus Rethwisch as Buzzsaw
Professor Toru Tanaka as Subzero
Mick Fleetwood as Mic
Dweezil Zappa as Stevie
Richard Dawson as Damon Killian
The cast of The Running Man also includes Karen Leigh Hopkins as Brenda, Sven Thorsen as Sven, Edward Bunker as Lenny, Bryan Kestner as Med Tech, Anthony Penya as Valdez, Kurt Fuller as Tony, Kenneth Lerner as Agent, Dey Young as Amy, Rodger Bumpass as Phil Hillton, Dona Hardy as Mrs. McArdle, Lynne Marie Stewart as Edith Wiggins, Bill Margolin as Leon, George P. Wilbur as Lieutenant Saunders, and Thomas Rosales Jr. as Chico.
Christopher Reeve was once attached to play Ben Richards.[3] In a 2015 interview about the film, Paul Michael Glaser said that he was originally approached to direct the film but declined because he felt that the preproduction period was insufficient.[4] Director Andrew Davis was hired instead but was fired after just two weeks because the production was one week behind schedule; Glaser was then hired. Schwarzenegger has stated this was a “terrible decision,” as Glaser “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes.”[5] LA Weekly stated that the film’s tone changed from a dark allegory to a humorous action film with the change of the film’s star.[6] With Reeve, The Running Man was about an unemployed man who goes on a violent game show for a thirty-day period to feed his family. With Glaser and Schwarzenegger, the protagonist became a condemned, but innocent, criminal forced into a three-hour gladiator-style game show by the justice system. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza wrote fifteen drafts of the script over the course of the film’s development.
When the movie was shown to a test audience, the deepfake technology led them to believe the two main characters were actually killed. Only later, when Richards and Amber are seen again, did they realize they were still alive. But a producer claimed the audience would be too stupid to understand what happened, and ordered the movie to be edited so everyone knew right away that it was not the real characters that died.[7]
Pop star Paula Abdul choreographed the preshow dance sequences. This was her second film credit, though she had already choreographed four Janet Jackson videos, as well as videos by ZZ Top, Duran Duran, and Debbie Gibson. The music used for the preshow entertainment was composed by Jackie Jackson and was dubbed “Paula’s Theme” in honor of Paula Abdul.
The producers originally wanted Chuck Woolery to play Damon Killian, but Woolery was unavailable due to his hosting jobs on Love Connection and Scrabble. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested Richard Dawson play Killian because he and Dawson were close friends and Schwarzenegger is a fan of Family Feud, which Dawson hosted.
The film’s release was postponed from summer 1987 to Thanksgiving 1987 due to the producers’ desire for the film to be the only action thriller released during the holiday season. The film opened on 1,600 screens on November 13, 1987, to moderately positive reviews.