As The Running Man stumbled into theaters last week, many wondered how this new version, which was supposedly more faithful to Stephen King’s novella, would handle the book’s bummer ending. The few, the proud, and the bored who made it through Running Man’s two-hour-plus jog through “eat the rich” sloganeering and Monster Energy plugs know that the ending feels tacked on at best. We won’t spoil any of the specifics, but speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the screenwriter behind 1987’s even looser adaptation, Stephen E. de Souza, says, “Something went wrong between the page and the stage again.”
De Souza, a legend of ’80s action who penned the screenplays for Die Hard, Commando, and 48 Hours, is trying to be nice about the reboot starring Glen Powell, emphasizing that he was “rooting” for the picture. He even felt that “on paper, they got the ending working.” But as it goes in the movie business, something changed between script and screen. “Even the reviews that love it say it stumbles at the end,” de Souza continues. “It seems to me that this time around, something went wrong between the page and the stage again.”
“The book’s ending is a downer, so you need a new ending. I would say that both the ’87 version and this version tweak the ending in pretty much the same way, except that in our version, we had less money, so it’s a little simpler,” he says. “Maybe the third version in 2045 will stick the landing.”
The Running Man has the feel of a film that changed drastically from page to stage, to borrow a phrase from Mr. de Souza. In addition to being director Edgar Wright’s most anonymous work to date, the movie strains especially in its overlong prologue and cut-to-death conclusion. Running Man opened behind Now You 3 Me: Now You Don’t at the box office.
