Original 'Running Man' Writer Offers Candid Response to Box Office Flop

Steven E. de Souza, the writer of the original 1987 Running Man, has responded after Glen Powell’s remake came in below expectations at the box office.

The Running Man Flopped in its Opening Weekend

Edgar Wright directed the reboot, which was produced for around $110 million but opened to a disappointing $17 million North American haul in its opening weekend. Overseas it made just $11 million for a total of $28 million, coming well below the weekend’s other new release, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which totaled more than $76 million globally. The Running Man was fairly well reviewed, but many critics noted that the third act is disappointing compared to what came before it.

Original Writer Steven de Souza Responded

In candid remarks to The Hollywood Reporter, de Souza admitted that he hasn’t yet seen Wright’s film despite having read the screenplay. (de Souza received an additional literary material credit on the remake.) “I read it and [felt that] on paper, they got the ending working,” de Souza said of the remake. “Even the reviews that love it say it stumbles at the end. It seems to me that this time around, something went wrong between the page and the stage again.”

However, de Souza admitted that refining the ending for a mainstream audience was no easy feat, given the conclusion of Stephen King’s (writing as Richard Bachmann) source novel. “The book’s ending is a downer, so you need a new ending,” the Die Hard screenwriter assessed. “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 joked, adding, “Maybe the third version in 2045 will stick the landing.”

The Running Man is in cinemas nationwide.