And if reality TV has made a program that combined Calmar game with Hunger games to a bloodthirsty effect? It is the premise of The racing manwhich is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name and focuses on the most popular and fatal television show in America.
If it looks like a certain Korean drama, The mother in progressN arrived decades earlier – the book was published in 1982 and the first cinematographic version, featuring an Arnold Schwarzenegger, dressed in Spandex, came five years later – and seems to be much more violent. And as you will see from the trailer below, it is also much more oily.
“Everyone runs”: What is man talking about?
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The flowing man is the name of the most watched television show in America, and in this program, competitors – called runners – must stay alive for thirty days while the cameras follow their movements. Oh, and they have a pack of professional murderers on the tail, and they don’t claim the assassins either. Think that American gladiators were tools with assault rifles and hand grenades.
Glen Powell plays the hero of the Ben Richards blue passes, who must win the prize in order to save his sick daughter. And as Paramount Pictures explains, producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) can regret persuading him to participate: “Distrust, instincts and the grain of Ben transform him into a favorite of unexpected fans – and a threat to the whole system. While the notes are arrows, the danger, and Ben must not only exceed hunters, but a national toxicomane.”
As funny as the Arnie version is, it has abandoned many of the most serious parts of the book to focus on making a typical action film from the 80s. But the novel was quite dark and some would say, premonitory: it takes place in an authoritarian in the United States where the economy collapsed, a little elite all the wealth, the resources are rare and the government uses propaganda, draconian censure and TV to keep the population silent.
It’s really dark stuff, and it will be interesting to see how it appears in the real film. I have great hopes: Edgar Wright said he loved the original film but wanted the book to have received a better adaptation. And this version has a much wider scope than the original: where it took place in a single city, the 2025 version is a cross-country flight.
The racing man will be published in theaters on November 7, 2025.
