The Running Man

The director’s chair changed hands twice. George P. Cosmatos left over the budget, his replacement Andrew Davis was dismissed in the opening days of the shoot, and Paul Michael Glaser took over. Schwarzenegger later called that a bad decision, saying Glaser shot the film like a television show and lost the deeper themes. The script had travelled a long way. Steven E. de Souza wrote fifteen drafts. The early conception was an unemployed man entering a thirty day manhunt, with Christopher Reeve attached; once Schwarzenegger came aboard it became a three hour arena show. Schwarzenegger suggested Richard Dawson for Damon Killian because Dawson was a working game show host running Family Feud, and that casting is where the satire actually bites. Paula Abdul choreographed the show’s opening dance numbers. In the novel, published as Richard Bachman, Richards enters to buy his daughter’s medicine, gets a twelve hour head start, is hunted through real cities for a month, and the story ends with a plane driven into the network tower. The film keeps the premise and a few names. Edgar Wright’s 2025 version goes back to the book. A good fit if you will take your satire from Dawson’s broadcasting manner rather than from the script. Not for anyone who came for Bachman’s starving father and his nationwide hunt.