Stephen King wrote The Running Man in 1982 under his pseudonym at the time, Richard Bachman. It’s set in a dystopian United States in the year 2025, where a popular reality show involves contestants trying to survive attacks by a team of hitmen to win money. This survival reality show is the тιтular The Running Man show. The protagonist of the story participates in the show to get money for his ailing daughter’s medical treatments. He wins a hundred dollars for every hour he survives, and must survive a month while being hunted in order to win a billion dollars.

The 1987 film of the same name, a movie adaptation of Stephen King’s novel that the author criticized, is only loosely based on the book. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s most famous for playing the тιтular character in The Terminator, an R-rated 1980s movie you can rewatch forever, played the protagonist. Today, in 2025, when the original novel was set, Edgar Wright is directing a remake of The Running Man starring Glen Powell. While this will be the first official remake, King’s novel, as one of the most influential works in sci-fi ever, has, in the meantime, inspired many great dystopian movies.

10

The Belko Experiment (2016)

Directed By Greg McLean

Greg McLean directed one of the worst Kevin Bacon horror movies, which is offensive in its portrayal of autism and Native Americans. So, it’s not surprising that, despite James Gunn conceiving of the considerably interesting premise for the film, The Belko Experiment doesn’t manage to hook a viewer as much as it should be able to. The poor pacing and the confusing editing choices make it difficult to find anything of value in the movie. Set in a fictional workplace, The Belko Experiment follows about eighty employees who have been locked inside the office.

They’re presented with a challenge – they must kill each other. The consequence of people not killing each other is the detonation of the tracking devices planted at the base of their skull, which effectively kills them anyway. The dystopian game-show vibe of the film makes it interesting for fans of The Running Man. However, due to poor character writing and, for some reason, the availability of guns as weapons, the action isn’t entertaining, and the film isn’t emotionally satisfying, becoming too bleak and self-serious at times.

9

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Directed By Paul Bartel

David Carradine is perhaps most famous for playing the тιтular Bill in the Kill Bill movie duology. Part of his mysterious persona in the movie is attributed to the amount of lore that’s built up about him. One of the legendary deleted scenes in the second movie would show him fighting against Michael Jai White. However, almost three decades ago, after his acting break in two consecutive Scorsese films, Carradine appeared as an iconic character in a goofy action movie that has major similarities with The Running Man.

Carradine plays a wrestler-type persona in Death Race 2000, known as The Frankenstein, clad in an all-black costume that looks like death incarnate. The film is set in a dystopian future where a game show is based on five racers’ ability to kill as many pedestrians as possible during their race. While the exploration of politics is gloomy and potent, the film is a cheesy action movie with a ton of gore that satirizes the media’s role in sensationalizing violence for people’s entertainment.

8

Ready Player One (2018)

Directed By Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg has directed some of the most perfect non-animated action movies for kids to watch – his fertile imagination has created a vast land of cinematic joy for moviegoers all over the world. As the forefather of the modern blockbuster, his works have come to influence more films and stories than one can keep count of. Among the more recent exciting ventures is Ready Player One, which is a meditative look at how pop culture works and how a form of nostalgia about old-time blockbusters creates a culture of revisiting that could potentially kill creativity in the modern age.

Set in the year 2040, Ready Player One tells the story of a kid who lives in a desolate world where people’s only source of joy is spending hours online in a virtual reality setup. It’s an imaginative land filled with Easter eggs and pop culture references, but after the death of its creator, its control is up for grabs. In an intense few days of gameplay involving brain-teasers, real-life risks, and ruminations about the mental state of people, players from every corner of the world compete for its control.

7

Ready Or Not (2019)

Directed By Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

One of the most terrifying horror comedy movies ever, Ready or Not in set in a mansion owned by a family of aristocrats who were cursed for their snobbish and classist behavior. Every new member of the family is made to play a game, and if they pick the most ominous card, the Hide-and-Seek, the family must hunt them down and kill them before dawn and perish. On her wedding night, the protagonist, played by Samara Weaving in possibly her best performance till date, picks the Hide-and-Seek card and gets embroiled in a game of life and death.

The labyrinthian mansion with its dimly lit rooms and corridors creates the perfect backdrop for the metaphorical chase. The rich family, haunted by the consequences of their actions, are actively hunting down a working woman who is a former foster child – this is a supernatural interpretation of capitalist dystopia. The fact that the family may be lying adds a cynically humorous layer to the delectably dark shenanigans. It was such a hit that the movie Ready or Not 2 is rumored to be in the works.

6

Judge Dredd (1995)

Directed By Danny Cannon

Judge Dredd is a cheesy sci-fi action thriller that is more interested in creating explosions and adrenaline-fueled fight scenes than exploring the implications of its premise. Based on the comics of the same name, it follows the тιтular character, played by Sylvester Stallone, as he tries to fight back and undo a conspiracy to wrongfully convict him of a crime he didn’t commit.

Judge Dredd is set in the 22nd century, where social order has entirely come undone, and the law is enforced by ruthless judges who play judge, jury, and executioner. The тιтular character’s journey during his adventure to clear his name and expose the truth about a genetic engineering program leads him to realize the inherent darkness of his profession. The skewed idea of justice, the dystopian regime, and the extremely violent law enforcement are clearly influenced by the concepts in The Running Man.

5

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Directed By George Miller

Any film in George Miller’s Mad Max franchise, whose latest entry is one of the best 2024 movie flops which could become cult hits in the future, could be an ideal watch while waiting for the remake of The Running Man. However, the best of them all, Mad Max: Fury Road, is perhaps closest to the Stephen King adaptation in its atmosphere.

Three decades after the previous Mad Max film, George Miller’s franchise finally grew after years of delays due to various reasons, including recasting and production handovers. However, it was worth the wait because it became the second-most nominated movie at the Oscars in 2016, and became a worldwide box office success overnight. Set in a dystopian wasteland where all resources, including water, are scarce, it follows Max Rockatansky, after his escape, during his extended road battle against a local warlord.

4

Mayhem (2017)

Directed By Joe Lynch

Similar to The Belko Experiment but with a significantly sharper satire at its core, Mayhem is a hilarious and gory horror comedy movie set in a fictional towering building that serves as the workplace for a fictional consulting firm. It follows two main characters – a morally bankrupt lawyer at the firm (Steven Yeun), and a desperate woman who needs more time on a loan (Samara Weaving) – as they take on the firm’s corporate order after realizing its inhumanity.

A virus breaks out in the entire building, which removes people’s inhibitions, and this sets up the film’s exploration of corporate greed. A literal mᴀssacre occurs in the building as disgruntled employees start killing each other, while the bosses upstairs release an award for whoever can kill the two people coming after him. Mayhem clinically takes apart the illusory worker’s satisfaction in a corporate setting, and the dystopian excess of violence as a means to the ending of an oppressive regime renders comparisons to The Running Man more than obvious.

3

Battle Royale (2000)

Directed By Kinji Fukasaku

One of Netflix’s biggest recent releases is Squid Game, which has become widely popular and recently got a second season, and is to be followed by a final third season later this year. It is very obvious that Squid Game draws inspiration from Battle Royale, a novel that popularized the survival game genre in Japan. It was adapted as a movie in 2000 and later became a manga series.

Battle Royale tells the story of a class of middle-schoolers, who are taken to a remote island and given three days to fight to the death until one of them remains. They’re fitted with explosive collars that will kill them if they decide to not play or stray out of the prescribed territory. This is a form of state-sanctioned punishment for juvenile delinquency that aims to prevent crime by younger people after a recession financially destroys many families across Japan. The similarities between Battle Royale and The Running Man are easy to discern.

2

The Hunt (2020)

Directed By Craig Zobel

In a darkly ironic twist of fate, Craig Zobel’s The Hunt, which is a satire on classism and political conservatism, had its release delayed when President Donald Trump had a fit on social media after finding out about its premise (via The Guardian). The Hunt is set in the present world, where a group of working-class people are kidnapped by a group of social elites for them to hunt.

A satire on the deep political divide between the left and the right wings, its message gets messy in delivery as it ends up stereotyping the kind of people it attempts to understand and emancipate. However, the premise of an actual war between two social classes is genius. The use of this premise to explore people’s lack of tolerance towards anyone with opposing viewpoints seems to be a direct nod to The Running Man. This isn’t surprising whatsoever, because The Hunt is loosely based on the 1924 Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game, which influenced King’s novel too.

1

Total Recall (1990)

Directed By Paul Verhoeven

Two years before he made arguably his most famous movie, Basic Instinct, one of the crime movies where the villain wins in the end, Paul Verhoeven directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. He was H๏τ off the success of RoboCop, and unlike that movie, which often sacrifices its satirical potential for cheesy action flick moments, Total Recall feels intentional in its commentary.

A working-class man discovers memories of a fantastical adventure, and through the powers he seemingly unlocks via the fantasy, he metaphorically takes on corporate America. The movie’s exploration of the risk of excessive militarization in a dystopian future, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stunning action sequences, and overdone gory action scenes make Total Recall the ideal choice for fans of The Running Man. They can look forward to a familiar blend of sci-fi, cheesy violence, and sleazy romance, all connected together by what is possibly Schwarzenegger’s best performance.