Why Stephen King Disliked Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Running Man Movie

In 1987, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in an adaptation of Stephen King’s “Richard Bachman” novel The Running Man, but King’s not a fan of the movie. King is a man quite used to having his work adapted for screens both big and small at this point, and even back in the late-1980s, he’d already seen over a dozen movies get made based on his books and short stories. For the most part, King tends to wish these adaptations well, and not really sweat them much, outside of his infamous hatred for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Still, there have been times, usually when prompted for his opinion, that King has made his dislike for an adaptation of his work known, such as with 1984’s Firestarter, which he compared to “cafeteria mashed potatoes.” There was also the case of The Lawnmower Man, which bore so little resemblance to the story it was supposedly based on that King successfully sued to have his name removed from the marketing.

While The Running Man isn’t regarded as a top-tier King adaptation, many find it enjoyable, and appreciate it as one of Schwarzenegger’s many fun action flicks, alongside things like Commando and Total Recall. Here’s why King disagrees with that positive assessment.

Why Stephen King Disliked Schwarzenegger’s Running Man Movie

One major reason Stephen King isn’t a fan of The Running Man movie is just how little it retains from the novel it’s based on. It centers on a character named Ben Richards competing on a dystopian game show called The Running Man, put on by a sinister TV network, but that’s about all the two stories have in common. As with Lawnmower Man, King demanded his name not be used in the film’s marketing, although in this case a lawsuit wasn’t required to enforce it. While King tends to be mostly forgiving of adaptations that make big changes to his work, he really doesn’t seem to like when the essence of the story and characters are altered, as seen with The Shining.

Another factor in King’s dislike of The Running Man movie is the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead. While there’s no evidence King has anything against Schwarzenegger personally or as an actor in general, King’s Ben Richards was a decidedly average everyman type, who was competing simply to try and get his family out of poverty. He was a true underdog against the professional assassins the show had hunting him. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger is built like The Incredible Hulk and Ben Richards fights like Superman, the complete opposite of what King intended for the character. He also has a much different motivation. What was a pretty bleak novel becomes a crowd-pleasing spectacle, and in that sense, it’s not hard to understand why that would irritate King.

About The Author