The Running Man ending explained: Edgar Wright reveals why he changed Stephen King’s original conclusion

Fans of Stephen King, rejoice. Edgar Wright’s The Running Man arrives as a faithful adaptation the author's 1982 novel, reclaiming the tone and political edge largely softened in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

But even as Wright returns to the book’s original spirit, he makes one significant change – its ending.

Speaking to The National, Wright says the team never considered using King’s original finale, a brutally dark final act that has long shocked readers.

“We were never going to do the ending in the book for reasons that I hope are obvious,” he says. “It wasn’t a case of toning anything down. We just didn’t want to do that exact ending. Something quite as bleak and nihilistic as that isn’t the ending that feels right for today. Stephen King was happy we changed it.”

But what did he change, and why did he change it? Let's break it down.

Warning: this article contains spoilers

A story set in 2025 – landing in the actual 2025

King drafted The Running Man in the early 1970s, published it under his Richard Bachman pseudonym in 1982 and set it in what then seemed like an exaggerated dystopia: the year 2025. The book imagined a society hollowed out by economic collapse, media manipulation and state-sanctioned spectacle. More than 40 years later, Wright is releasing his version into the very year the novel predicted – one in which those ideas feel less like science fiction and more like commentary.

The original ending to The Running Man was far more bleak, and Edgar Wright changed it to suit the times, he explains. Photo: Paramount Pictures

“The disturbing thing is how little has changed,” Wright says. “We started the script in early 2022, and you can’t help that life is catching up fast. The best genre storytelling holds a funhouse mirror up to reality, and the line between the two is very thin right now.”

That alignment – an imagined future colliding with the present – shaped how Wright approached the film’s conclusion.

How the novel and film reach their final moments

In King’s novel, Ben Richards is a struggling father who enters a televised manhunt to earn money for his sick daughter. Instead of an arena, the world itself becomes the battleground: Richards must evade professional Hunters while the public reports his whereabouts for cash.