Stephen King‘s 2025 cinematic adaptations, like The Long Walk and The Running Man, highlight exactly what makes King such a legendary writer. Stephen King has been an icon of the literary scene for decades. His 1974 novel, Carrie, quickly established him as a uniquely gifted author. King has written novels and collections of short stories ever since, ranging in genre, story, and themes. Even the stories that sound like they could be too similar end up feeling wholly unique, especially when taken by distinctive filmmakers and adapted to the big screen.

The best example of this might be how The Long Walk and The Running Man, both written under his pen name Richard Bachman, share some fundamental story beats but end up playing out very differently. These differences are evident from their tones, the bleak grounded conversations of The Long Walk contrasting easily against the desperate action of The Running Man. The true strength of King is how he can take similar ideas and still have them feel unique.

The Running Man & The Long Walk Have Similar Plots (But Are Wildly Different)

The Running Man and The Long Walk, both based on Stephen King novels, have similar core concepts that play out in very different ways — highlighting a certain versatility of tone that has always made King stand out as a writer. On paper, The Running Man and The Long Walk are functionally similar stories about a post-apocalyptic America.

Both stories focus on a young man who, feeling he has no other choice to provide for himself and his family, enters into a televised national compeтιтion. The compeтιтion has life-or-death stakes, with failure to keep moving comparable to a death sentence. Both stories explore themes of hope in bleak settings, the highs (and lows) of humanity, and our capacity for survival at all costs.

However, as seen in the new film adaptations of both stories, they couldn’t be more different, plot and tone-wise. The Long Walk is a grittier story of a collapsed America, with young men forced to make an endless trek on the off-chance they’ll survive and be rewarded for their “valor.” It’s just as much a parable about the Vietnam War as it is about modern politics.

By contrast, The Running Man is a more bombastic story that embraces the wild lengths of a grimy post-apocalyptic United States. Edgar Wright’s upcoming film fully commits to that tone, as evidenced by the movie’s action-heavy and more stylized trailer. It also fits well alongside the previous cinematic adaptation of the film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While both stories are about modern anxieties amplified by a dystopian United States, they feature very different kinds of very human villains. The Major of The Long Walk is horrifying in ways that The Running Man‘s Dan Killian, whose sleazy producer traits make him heartless in a very different way.

Both characters are painfully human monsters, who represent some of the worst qualities of modern society. Both also underscore just how different these stories are, as they symbolize very different aspects of life. It all speaks to the natural versatility King brings to his writing, which translates to the wide variety of adaptations of his work over the years.

The Best Trait Of Stephen King’s Work Is His Versatility

Both stories feel wholly unique from one another, tackling a similar core concept from different places. That’s the beauty of Stephen King as a writer — there’s an undercurrent of versatility to his writing that makes it easy to adapt in lots of unexpected ways. His books have ranged from horrifying to life-affirming, heartbreakingly tragic to shockingly bittersweet.

Even looking at the other Stephen King films released in 2025, that versatility is on full display. The gonzo violence of The Monkey couldn’t be any more different from the affirming charm of The Life of Chuck. King’s works transcend genres, even as his most famous works tend to paint him in a particular tonal corner.

The Long Walk and The Running Man take similar core concepts and use them to satirize different elements of life. Although both books are tragedies, one of them is a bleak character-driven narrative about an endless path in lieu of the Vietnam War. The other is a harsh criticism of sensationalist tendencies in entertainment and modern American culture at large.

The fact that both movies can come out months apart but feel entirely different isn’t just because of the very different tones that their respective filmmakers are playing with. In their DNA, both stories are about different things, with vastly different characters coming to different conclusions about the world.

This is what makes King so good. The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, The Long Walk, and The Running Man all spoke to different filmmakers in different ways, while remaining true to their original stories. This allows the films to all be based on the works of Stephen King, while never feeling derivative of one another.

They’re ultimately very different stories, making their shared author all the more surprising. The Long Walk and The Running Man highlight how Stephen King’s world-building and mastery of various tones can translate to adaptations that feel nothing alike, but are connected through their core ideas.