The Running Man
- Thread starter Goatface
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Siliconemelons
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Make it like the Bachman book and I would watch the shit out of it. The Bachman idea was cool as hell.
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DickTrickle
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Juvarisx
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Would be US wide and adds subterfuge into it. Using the books ending is taboo and will never really happen in a movie for a long while.
Goatface
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i posted this in the "movies that don't deserve" thread. this is just the setup, think all explained in first chapter.
book is sorta run of the mill "hunting man" now, except everyone and the government are playing. richards is a tradesman that goes against the authorities one to many times, ends up blacklisted from work. years later, he is jobless and lives in gov housing, with his wife and sick kid. wife is secretly prostituting herself to keep them going. he signs up to do the running man show. running man has to survive 30 days and can go anywhere in the world. they earn $100 per hour plus $100 for every hunter or cop they kill. prize is $1 billion. people earn money reporting on them.
while the book was written in 1982, it is set in 2025. there is some new tech, but nothing like the internet. runners are giving a digital recorder that weighs like 6lb and has to snail mail 2 vids per day back to the studio.
while the book was written in 1982, it is set in 2025. there is some new tech, but nothing like the internet. runners are giving a digital recorder that weighs like 6lb and has to snail mail 2 vids per day back to the studio.
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Chukzombi
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its very different compared to the book. the hero isnt some musclebound soldier. just a regular dude trying to feed his family and get medication for his sick daughter. his wife is turning tricks for food money and the child is getting sicker because the medicine they can afford is bullshit. so Ben Richards decides to risk his life by applying to the Games network for one of their reality gameshows which will give him money for some dangerous stunts where he will probably die. but at least his daughter and wife will have some money. he thinks he will get a crappy show, but gets their flagship program called The Running Man, where you get paid for every hour you survive.
instead of cartoonish villains, its a bunch of investigators tracking Richards down. its not set in a laser tag arena, you can hide anywhere in the US, but you have to mail in daily video tapes to be played on the TV show. the "hunters" use those postal codes to pinpoint where Richards is . it turns into this huge thing as Richards becomes more desperate and anxious because he's trying to contact his wife to see if she's receiving money and to check on his daughter. he cant get in touch with her.
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Siliconemelons
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I think it was here on FoH - but somewhere there was linked a write up on how to do a good way of modernizing it- because the video tape and mail situation is something that even if you make it 1:1 of the source, it just would seem cheese ball.
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Chukzombi
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Probably. This story was written 40 years ago and it was King's version of a dystopian future. A lot of this would be difficult to be believable in this day and age. Richards would be spotted by multiple cameras on every block. He wouldn't last a day. He would have to set up in the woods and that wouldn't be as cool as the urban settings of the book. I also doubt they would make Richards say and do some of the things in the book for the big screen. I don't want to spoil the story, but Richards is kind of an asshole.
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DickTrickle
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Thanks for the details. That sounds interesting -- I'll have to give it a read.
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All the stuff King published under the name Richard Bachman is pretty good, although I haven't read anything of his since the early 90's.
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He's got some good stuff past that period, but his coke fueled / case of tall boys days was his best period. It gets pretty hit and miss after his accident and the full onset of TDS.
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