Stephen King’s The Running Man is a prime example of a dystopian thriller about characters being forced to battle to the death, and there are many other exciting movies of its ilk. King wrote the novel under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which he adopted to make sure his early literary success wasn’t a fluke. Like every other King story with a juicy high-concept premise (Carrie, The Shining, Misery, The Dead Zone, It, Pet Sematary, The Mist), The Running Man has been turned into a classic movie, released in 1987. It’s one of the most renowned works in the fight-to-the-death genre.
Edgar Wright has been quietly working on a new adaptation of King’s dystopian classic for a while now, and the project’s producer Simon Kinberg has provided a promising update on The Running Man remake. Wright is actively developing the script with Michael Bacall and might be ready to start rolling cameras on the remake as early as next year. In the meantime, there are plenty of other great movies to check out about a fight-to-the-death tournament in a dystopian world, from The Hunger Games to Battle Royale.
10 The Running Man (1987)
Before the remake of The Running Man goes into production, it’s worth checking out the original 1987 adaptation of the classic King story. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards, a convicted criminal who’s forced to take part in a sinister game show in which professional killers are sent to hunt him down. The movie deviates massively from King’s source material, but it has some thrilling action scenes and Family Feud’s Richard Dawson gives a spectacular performance as the unscrupulous host of the Running Man show.
9 Predators (2010)
The third installment in the Predator franchise, titled Predators in an homage to Aliens, took the action off Earth for the first time. Predators sees a bunch of human convicts being dropped into an intergalactic hunting ground and stalked by a pack of Predators. The characters might not be particularly three-dimensional, but there’s more than enough high-octane action – some of the bloodiest action in the whole Predator franchise – to make up for it.
8 The Hunt (2020)
Craig Zobel’s The Hunt tackled the Trump-era political divide in the United States through a riff on “The Most Dangerous Game” in 2020’s The Hunt. A group of powerful elites kidnap a bunch of working-class stiffs whose political views differ from theirs and hunt them for fun. The messaging might be a little heavy-handed (the film spends its runtime checking off contemporary political issues from crisis actors to conspiracy theories), but Betty Gilpin gives a delightfully fierce performance as the badass the elites shouldn’t have messed with.
7 Guns Akimbo (2019)
Daniel Radcliffe plays an online troll who finds himself in a live-streamed death match with a pair of pistols bolted to his hands in Guns Akimbo. The movie is both a satire of videogame violence and a dazzling display of videogame violence. It’s an exercise in non-stop carnage as an unsuspecting everyman is thrown into a ridiculously dangerous predicament. This is one of the many wonderfully bonkers movies that Radcliffe has done in recent years to distance himself from his Harry Potter image.
6 Death Race 2000 (1975)
B-movie legend Roger Corman offered up his own vision of a dystopian future America in Death Race 2000. The movie revolves around the Transcontinental Road Race, in which drivers are encouraged to kill as many pedestrians as possible to entertain the masses. Death Race 2000 was released around the same time as Rollerball, another sci-fi satire about a deadly sport being used as national entertainment in a dystopian future. Despite Rollerball having studio money and A-list talent involved, Death Race 2000 emerged as the stronger movie.
5 The Belko Experiment (2016)
80 American workers at an office in Colombia are locked inside the building and told to fight each other to the death in The Belko Experiment. There’s an added twist that raises the stakes: if they don’t start killing each other, devices inside their heads will explode. Wolf Creek’s Greg McLean directed the film from a script by Slither’s James Gunn. With a pair of proven horror auteurs at the helm, The Belko Experiment is filled with garish gore and unbridled carnage.
4 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The third entry in George Miller’s Mad Max series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, sees the titular post-apocalyptic warrior arriving in Bartertown, where every dispute is resolved by a fight to the death in a gladiatorial arena called the “Thunderdome.” The Mad Max threequel was met with mixed reviews, but the critics all agreed that the Thunderdome fight scenes were incredibly staged. Beyond Thunderdome was criticized for having a lighter tone than its predecessors, but the Thunderdome sequences are as grisly and hard-hitting as anything in the first two movies.
3 Ready Or Not (2019)
After marrying into a wealthy family, a young bride finds herself fighting for her life when her new Devil-worshipping in-laws take part in a twisted ritualistic game on the wedding night in Ready or Not. Ready or Not is a riveting watch, thanks to palpable tension, brilliant performances from the cast (led by the great Samara Weaving), and a hefty heap of pitch-black humor. The subversive thrills and dark laughs of Ready or Not earned directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett the reins of the Scream franchise.
2 The Hunger Games Franchise (2012–)
Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games books didn’t invent the concept of a fight-to-the-death tournament, but they did bring it into the mainstream in a digestible Y.A. template. Jennifer Lawrence gives a star-making turn as ace archer Katniss Everdeen, who’s torn between two romantic interests while she and a bunch of other unlucky tributes – one boy and one girl from each of the 12 districts – fend for themselves in a sadistic televised battle to the death. With its teen love triangle set against a genre backdrop, The Hunger Games is essentially Twilight with more bloodsport.
1 Battle Royale (2000)
The best The Running Man-style fight-to-the-death movie is the one that the genre is named after: Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale. Based on Koushun Takami’s controversial novel of the same name, Battle Royale sees a group of junior high kids being forced to fight to the death by their totalitarian government. Battle Royale has some of the most shocking scenes of violence ever put on film – so shocking that a few countries banned the movie – but there’s also a veil of incisive satire over the whole thing.
