Could a reality game show from 'The Running Man' happen today?
Actor Glen Powell stars in the 2025 remake of "The Running Man," being released on Nov. 7. Photo credit: Ross Ferguson/2025 Paramount Pictures
In 1982, Richard Bachman wrote a novel about a reality show in which contestants win money by evading a team of hit men sent to kill them by a government-operated television station.
The name of the novel was "The Running Man," and Richard Bachman was a pseudonym used by Stephen King.
The year the novel was set? You guessed it: 2025.
The novel, of course, became a 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In November, a new movie will be released starring Glen Powell and Josh Brolin.
We talked to faculty from various departments at Arizona State University about the themes in King's novel — rising violence, a totalitarian dystopian society, class war between the rich and poor — and their relevance today.
Jeffrey Holmes
Game studies
Holmes said the idea of a government producing reality shows in which contestants get killed is not as crazy as it seems, noting there’s a long history of violent games as entertainment, from the gladiator battles in ancient Rome to video games like Cyberpunk 2077.
“There’s a common thread,” Holmes said. “People like watching other people do things and sometimes, statistically, that’s watching them get hurt. I always tell my students that there’s a zero rule: Humans will human.
“We are capable of wonderful outpourings of creative expression and empathy, as well as doing some of the vilest things possible. Violence is a core part of our biological history and our cultural history.”
Holmes said he sees an extension of that voyeuristic nature in the livestreaming of video games on social media platforms like YouTube and Twitch. The games themselves, Holmes said, are not the attraction as much as the streamers playing them and the chat channel on the stream.
“They’ll interact with each other on the chat and talk to the streamer,” Holmes said. “Often, it becomes sort of sadistic. Because of the weird parasocial nature of those interactions, where people are faceless and just a name on the screen, they’ll attack the streamer or mock them and ridicule them. The streamer will have to sort of perform increasingly sometimes harmful things just to keep the attention flowing.”
But what if, in the reality show "The Running Man" is set in, no contestant ever gets killed — would the viewership crater?
“Humans are very violent creatures,” Holmes said. “Physical violence resonates for us in a way. It’s maybe this primal urge, I guess, to engage in those things. And then watching others do it maybe scratches that itch a bit.
“Maybe it feels like we’re cheating death a little bit. Like, the Grim Reaper got them, but not me.”
Michelle Martinez
Race and gender in media
A show like "The Running Man" could never air today, right?
The day before she watched the 1987 film, Martinez read about a proposal in which the Department of Homeland Security would be involved in a reality show, “The American,” where immigrants would compete for U.S. citizenship.
The show never got off the ground but the fact it was even discussed is similar to "The Running Man," Martinez said, in that poor people like Schwarzenegger’s character, Ben Richards, are seen as disposable.
“It’s a cautionary tale about how totalitarianism or authoritarianism mixed with reality TV as propaganda equals devastation,” Martinez said.
One theme in "The Running Man" involves the decision of people who come across Richards as he’s trying to flee from his would-be executioners. Do they help him escape or turn him in?
In that sense, Martinez said, it’s similar to the choice people have today when they confront evil.
“How many average citizens does it take to allow injustice to continue and perpetrate?” she said. “How are you going to be involved? Working against it, ignoring it or being part of the violence itself?”
Dennis L. Hoffman
Economics
In King’s novel, the main character, Ben Richards, is out of work; his 18-month-old daughter is sick; his wife has resorted to prostitution to bring in money. Desperate, Richards agrees to be a contestant on the game show and make $100 for every hour he stays alive.
That kind of desperation is not uncommon, Hoffman said. In fact, it’s more common than one might think. He recounted the story of a family friend who lost her job as a postmaster and began embezzling money to pay medical bills for her son.
In literature, the most famous example might be the protagonist of Les Misérables, Jean Valjean, who spends 19 years in prison after stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s child.
“There’s all sorts of examples where people take risks sometimes over and above what is apparently rational,” Hoffman said. “You have people marching thousands of miles taking life risks to cross the border without any certain outcome. Why? Because they’re taking that risk to better their lives.
“At the end of the day, you have one life and one family. We like to think we make rational decisions within kind of a confined space. But when it’s extreme, you’re pushed to the extremes.”
Joshua Vasquez
Film history
Vasquez said there’s a disturbing truth in "The Running Man," one that is as true in the reality of 2025 as it was in the fictional 2025 of the book.
“People are happy to watch the spectacle,” Vasquez said. “They’re happy not to have to think about the totalitarian world they live in.”
But it’s one thing, Vasquez admitted, to watch a reality show like "The Amazing Race." It’s another to watch a man being hunted and possibly killed — all for entertainment purposes.
“There’s a part of me that wants to say we never get to that point unless something so fundamental has happened to society that it’s been profoundly destabilized in some ways,” he said.
“I think there would have to be such a disruption for that to happen. It really would have to be kind of a postapocalyptic society where they’re trying to build it all over again.”
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