James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” continued to dominate the Korean box office over the Dec. 26–28 frame, grossing $8.6 million from more than 1 million admissions, according to KOBIS, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. The film has now amassed $32.5 million.
“Zootopia 2” remained a powerful No. 2, adding $3 million for the weekend and lifting its cumulative total to $50.3 million. The sequel has now crossed 7.4 million admissions, cementing its status as one of 2025’s top-performing imported animated releases.
Opening in third place was the South Korean romantic drama “Even If This Love Disappears from the World Tonight,” which debuted with $1.2 million. Directed by Kim Hye-young and based on the novel by Ichijo Misaki, the film stars Choo Young-woo and Shin Si-ah in a bittersweet high-school romance centered on a girl with anterograde amnesia whose memories reset each morning. The film has earned $2.5 million in its first five days.
Japanese animated release “Crayon Shinchan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers” followed in fourth, grossing $773,000 for a running total of $1.8 million.
Local family title “Pororo the Movie: Sweet Castle Adventure” placed fifth, adding $147,000 to reach $1.2 million. Comedy-drama “The People Upstairs” continued its steady run in sixth, pushing its cumulative haul to $3.6 million. Directed by Ha Jung-woo and starring Gong Hyo-jin, Kim Dong-wook, Lee Ha-nee and Ha Jung-woo himself, the film follows a downstairs couple driven to exhaustion by constant noise from their upstairs neighbours. A tense dinner meant to resolve the issue quickly unravels into an evening of sharp confessions and shifting dynamics.
Stephen King adaptation “The Life of Chuck” opened in seventh with $43,642, while “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” added $38,622, bringing its total to $1.5 million.
Rounding out the chart were Japanese anthology features “Tatsuki Fujimoto 17–26 Part-1” and “Tatsuki Fujimoto 17–26 Part-2,” which earned $44,274 and $44,473 respectively.
The top 10 films collectively grossed $14.02 million over the Dec. 26–28 weekend, slightly down from last weekend’s $15.2 million.
At long last, this week’s episode of It: Welcome to Derry gave fans what they’d been waiting for: Pennywise the Dancing Clown in full circus regalia, complete with glowing eyes and way too many pointy teeth. The big moment was well worth it, and even if it felt like episode five was a long time to hold out on It‘s signature villain, the show’s creative team—which includes Barbara Muschietti, Andy Muschietti, Brad Caleb Kane, and Jason Fuchs—has often spoken about why they wanted to build that anticipation. But now that Pennywise is here, what’s next?
For starters: more details about his past, beyond what we already know about the asteroid thanks to the It movies and Stephen King’s book, not to mention earlier episodes of Welcome to Derry. Speaking to TV Guide, Fuchs promised “a lot of Pennywise” moving forward, with Kane teasing, “He’s in! He’s another character,” meaning Welcome to Derry‘s already large ensemble is simply going to have to make room for more.
If you watched the teaser for episode six, which arrives Sunday on HBO, you might have spotted a familiar face: Bill Skarsgård, not in his Pennywise greasepaint, but instead in the guise of Pennywise’s most notable human form: “Bob Gray.” He pops up in King’s book, but Welcome to Derry aims to dig even deeper into what he means to the story.
“Certainly, when we talk about the mysteries we’re excited to discover, we’re excited to understand why the shapeshifter has chosen to return, time and again, to the form of Pennywise,” Fuchs told TV Guide. “And what was that first encounter with Bob Gray? What did that look like? Who is Bob Gray? We have a lot of whys we want answers to, and the story of Bob Gray and the story of Pennywise are certainly in that bucket. So without spoiling anything in those final episodes, you’re going to see that mystery looked into in a really serious way.”
But what will Bob Gray’s chompers look like? Find out on It: Welcome to Derry, which drops new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
There are three different versions ofThe Running Man, with three different endings. The original 1982 book ends one way, the 1987 movie ends another, and now Edgar Wright’s 2025 movie with Glen Powell has its own. In our review, we felt the ending was the biggest problem with the film, but one very important person liked it more than we did: Stephen King.
A few weeks back, we learned that Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall had to get King’s permission to change the ending of the story, which he granted. And now, with the film in theaters, King told Entertainment Weekly exactly what he thought about the ending. “I like the ending of Edgar’s version of The Running Man very much,” King told EW. “Can’t say too much—spoilers—but I think readers of the novel will be satisfied because they get to have it both ways. If you see what I mean, and I’m betting you do.”
That’s the non-spoiler answer. Let’s dive into what he means and why we weren’t fans of it below.
So let’s break this down quickly. In the 1987 version of the story, which is radically different in a ton of ways, Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is thought to be dead but later emerges in The Running Man studio, sends the show’s host/creator Killian (Richard Dawson) into the arena, gets the girl, and lives happily ever after. That’s a huge departure from the 1982 book, where Richards actually dies by flying a plane into the network TV building. The book ends with the dark line of “The explosion was tremendous, lighting up the night like the wrath of God, and it rained fire twenty blocks away.” Brutal.
Wright’s film is sort of a mix of both. The whole movie very closely mirrors the story of the 1982 novel, so we do see Ben Richards (Powell) get on a plane with a course set for the network building. But things change when it gets shot down on the way, never reaching its destination, and everyone assumes Ben is dead. Of course, he’s not. Through the social media creator we met earlier in the movie (Apostle, played by Daniel Ezra), we learn that Ben somehow escaped the plane before it exploded. We then see Ben reunite with his family and, finally, invade The Running Man and get revenge on Killian (Josh Brolin).
So you get the mostly happy, burn-the-world-down ending from the movie, but also the book-accurate setup with Ben on a plane and the plane crashing. That’s King’s “get to have it both ways.” Which we totally understand. Plus, it makes sense. We’re pretty sure modern audiences would not have liked seeing Glen Powell die at the end by flying a plane into a building. That hits much differently now than it did in 1982, obviously.
However, one of the things we liked most about Wright’s version of the film is how meticulous it is. It explains the rules, the locations, all of it in such detail. But that goes completely out the window at the end, when we are fed this sort of YouTube video that doesn’t explicitly explain anything, followed by a few very fast-paced wrap-up scenes. Altogether, it robs us of the full satisfaction we could’ve had from both Ben seeing his family again and getting revenge against the network, while also leaving us more questions than answers. It’s all too fast, too loose, and too confusing. Does it give us a happy ending with a twist? Yes, but we hoped for more.
Did you see The Running Man? Did you like the ending? Let us know below.
Describe This Movie In One Bruce Almighty Quote: BRUCE: Lower and debase myself for the amusement of total strangers? Yeah, I could do that. Sounds like fun.
Brief Plot Synopsis: “Ben Richards, come on down!”
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 Richard Dawsons out of 5.
Tagline: “Millions hunt. One runs. Everyone watches.”
Better Tagline: “Still more ethical than trophy hunting.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Few things trigger desperation in a man like being unemployed with a sick child. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) knows more than most, having been blackballed from most employment for repeated “insubordination.” But there’s still one place where someone from the slums can earn some New Dollars, and that’s on the Network’s potentially lethal game shows. Producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) thinks the angry Richards is a perfect fit for The Running Man, in which contestants attempt to survive for 30 days while being hounded not just be the Network’s elite Hunters, but by ordinary citizens, who can earn money from contestant sightings.
“Critical” Analysis: Stephen King wrote the Running Man (as Richard Bachman) back in 1982, when constant surveillance was just a glint in Peter Thiel’s eye. Set in an economically depressed and dystopian 2025 (“fiction”), King’s novel was prescient in depicting both the stranglehold elites have on society and the increasing cruelty of reality television. What it may have overemphasized was the oppressed masses capacity for revolution, a pitfall stumbled into by both Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 adaptation and this new version, directed by Edgar Wright (The “Cornetto” Trilogy, Baby Driver).
Wright’s version is more faithful to the book than Glaser’s. Though in truth, it would be harder not to be. The latter starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as the “weak and tubercular” (King’s words) Ben Richards, who played a cop betrayed by his superiors, in a version of the game setting the “Runners” against glandular freaks armed with flamethrowers and chainsaws. Here, Richards’ background is largely intact, and the concept of Runners being hunted by both Network assassins and billions of ordinary citizens remains as well.
Though referring to Glen Powell as “tubercular” is … a bit of a stretch.
So, fine; it’s a better adaptation. But is it a better movie? It certainly looks better, having been shot on location in he UK instead of in a janky Hollywood soundstage. Brolin, Colman Domingo (as Running Man host “Bobby T”), and yes, even Powell, are also better actors than Schwarzenegger, Jim Brown, or Jesse “The Body” Ventura. The special effects, courtesy of ILM, are top notch, and — for the movie’s first half, anyway — it felt like everything was falling into place.
Much like James Gunn, Edgar Wright has a tendency to mix comedy with occasionally shocking violence. This helps offset the brutality of the world Richards and his family inhabits. But should it? Because even this “more faithful” rendition runs counter to the bleak anti-capitalist message of the novel. The Running Man is the closest thing Wright has come to directing a straight action movie since Baby Driver. And some of the sequences are both gripping and amusing, but even the comedic flourishes are abandoned for the film’s third act.
“What do you mean your grandfather committed some ‘light treason?’” Credit:Paramount Pictures
This is also about where the 1987 version bogs down, and for similar reasons. Movies that tell downbeat stories without some form of comeuppance haven’t really been marketable to American audiences since the 1970s. The Schwarzenegger movie took the passages about Richards-inspired proletarian riot in King’s novel and blew them up into full-blown revolution (led by Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa, no less). In Wright’s movie, Richards shelters with a nerdy anarchist (played by Michael Cera) who publishes a zine that will blow the lid off the Network’s abuses.
You read that right: in the year 2025, the masses will be moved to full-scale revolt by a type of publication that saw its popularity peak almost 30 years ago.
It isn’t just the facile revolutionary bullshit, because even though this iteration of The Running Man hews closer to King’s book, it still softens many of its bleaker aspects, including the fate of Richards’ family and his own ambiguous final moments. To be clear, I never expected anyone — Edgar Wright or otherwise — to try and bring the written ending to the screen (though to his credit, he does have Killian acknowledge the possibility). But instead of finding a reasonable alternative, he gives us a finale that makes Arnold walking into the sunset with Maria Conchita Alonso look like The Mist.
Admittedly, you don’t hire Edgar Wright if you’re just looking for a straightforward book treatment. And the aggravating thing is, The Running Man could’ve worked as an actioner that got some jokes in while still highlighting the depravity of a society that feeds its poorest citizens into a meat grinder for entertainment. But the movie’s utter cop-out of an ending (and ham-fisted credits buzzwords) now make me doubt if the director of Hot Fuzz really understands satire as much as I previously thought.
Twitter was once a place where notable filmmakers offered a piece of themselves in between regimented press tours. Sometimes, they’d answer fan questions, or they’d go back and forth with each other in an effort to provide advice to aspiring filmmakers. And in some instances, one of their tweets would actually lead to collaboration, something Edgar Wright knows firsthand.
In 2017, Wright responded to a random tweet to say that The Running Man is the remake he’d most want to undertake. At 14, he’d read Stephen King’s (as Richard Bachman) 2025-set dystopian novel of the same, but he wasn’t old enough to see the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led adaptation in U.K. cinemas the year prior. Once he finally caught up to Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 film a couple years later, he realized that King’s book was still largely untapped, thereby hatching his longtime desire to reapproach the source material. Producer Simon Kinberg, remembering Wright’s tweet, then offered him that very opportunity a few years ago.
Reteaming with his Scott Pilgrim vs. the World co-writer, Michael Bacall, the co-writers took their cues from King’s work and positioned their story on Ben Richards, but not the “Butcher of Bakersfield” à la Schwarzenegger’s take. Instead, Ben is a working-class guy whose temperament has cost him the ability to support his struggling family in the film’s corporation-controlled future. So he’s forced to audition for reality television that’s produced by the authoritarian “Network,” and despite his original intent, he’s talked into participating as a “Runner” in their deadliest game show known as The Running Man. If Ben survives the headhunting pursuits of the show’s “Hunters” for 30 days, he can pocket up to $1 billion.
Whenever filmmakers adapt King’s work, they usually admit to being terrified of his response. It’s hard enough that he’s arguably the most celebrated author to ever pen genre fiction, but his famous disapproval of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his 1977 novel, The Shining, inevitably comes to mind. However, being the social butterfly that he is, Wright already had a well-established email relationship with King.
“21 years ago, Stephen King gave us a press quote for Shaun of the Dead, and it was mind-blowing to me at the time that we got a rave from Stephen King on our poster,” Wright tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’ve then had this email correspondence with him over the years where he’d always be generous about my movies. But we would mostly email about music. I’d sometimes send him vinyl on his birthday — bands like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Sunflower Bean.”
The conversation eventually turned to Wright’s development of The Running Man, mainly because King had contractual approval over his choice of leading man and any major story changes, such as the ending. Wright and his Ben Richards casting of Glen Powell soon cleared both of those hurdles with flying colors, but there was still overwhelming pressure to now fulfill those expectations on set and in the edit. Fortunately, Wright’s pleasant experience with King only continued.
“The email I got after he watched the movie had the subject heading in all caps. It just said, ‘WOW,’” Wright recalls. “He said lots of nice things about the movie, but then he said, ‘It’s faithful enough to the novel that fans will be happy, but different enough that it kept me excited.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I can’t ask for anything more than that.’”
The mission of the film may have been about honoring the original novel, but Wright still made a point to recognize the cult fans of the 1987 film. It may not be mentioned in the same breath as Schwarzenegger’s more signature films such as Terminator 2, True Lies and Total Recall, but respect is still paid. And as revealed in the marketing, Schwarzenegger even makes a photographic cameo as the presidential face of this near future’s $100 bill. The Easter egg actually has double meaning. It not only acknowledges the actor behind the original Ben Richards, but it’s also a cheeky reference to another sci-fi actioner.
“It’s a shared joke with the DemolitionMan universe,” Wright shares. “In DemolitionMan, they mention President Schwarzenegger, so it’s my little shout out to both Arnie and [Demolition Man co-screenwriter] Daniel Waters.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Wright also discusses how his and Powell’s friendship with the Mission: Impossible brain trust inspired The Running Man.
***
Director Edgar Wright and Glen Powell on the set of The Running Man.
Paramount Pictures
Every time I talk to you, I always try to pump you for information about your contributions to the Mission: Impossible franchise, which features a running man who sometimes wears disguises in a race against time. So when I found out you were making The RunningMan, I theorized that it partially stemmed from you spending so much time under the hood of the Mission movies and wanting to do something with a similar engine. So how right or wrong is this theory?
Yes, I would say it’s partially [right]. I love the genre. What Chris [McQuarrie] and Tom have done in the last three or four movies set a template for modern action. I was actually busy making The Running Man, so the recent one, The Final Reckoning, was the first one that I had not seen an early cut of since Fallout. Chris usually invites me to see an early cut, so I saw early cuts of Fallout and Dead Reckoning, but I didn’t see Final Reckoning until the premiere.
Glen [Powell] has obviously worked with both Chris and Tom, and he certainly came to this with the same desire as me to do as much stunt work as is safely possible. Glen will probably tell you this as well, but Tom was his first call after he got the role. (Laughs.) “What advice can you give me?” And when I say advice, I literally mean advice for running on camera.
But the real origin story goes much further back?
Yeah, I read the book when I was about 14, and I read it before I saw the 1987 movie. I was too young to see the 1987 version at the cinema in the U.K. where it was rated 18. And by the time I saw it a couple of years later, I was very aware that the film, whilst really entertaining, was radically different to the book. So even before I was in the business, it always stuck in my head that there was a Stephen King book where large portions of the story were not on screen. That’s why I hesitate to use the word remake with our Running Man because I really think it’s a new adaptation of the same source material.
The book is a first-person narration, and Ben Richards is in every single scene of our film. You don’t see any scenes or go somewhere else without him, apart from what’s sometimes on the TV. You don’t have any information that he doesn’t also have. As such, the action is very subjective, and hopefully the audience is living vicariously through him in the game. That meant that Glen is front and center of every single action set piece, and we designed them around what he can do.
Director Edgar Wright on the set of The Running Man.
Paramount Pictures
As you said, the original film was only a loose adaptation of the book. It also wasn’t a box office smash hit by any means. It has its cult fans, but it really hasn’t had an afterlife like BladeRunner or even ScottPilgrim vs. the World. Were you even more willing to tackle this because there wasn’t a giant shadow to contend with from the first movie?
It does have a passionate cult following that I’m very aware of, and I would hope that the people who love the 1987 film would love this. But I don’t think that factored into it as much as me knowing that there was a different movie in [the source material].
The best remakes of films or the best new adaptations are where you’re doing something radically different with it. David Cronenberg’s The Fly is a great example. It’s wildly different to the 1958 one, but I can enjoy both. When there are remakes that feel like a shot-for-shot remake, I wonder, “Why even bother if you’re just doing the same beats as the other film?” So those movies don’t really interest me, and they feel a bit like karaoke. But this felt like a fresh movie because the source material hadn’t been fully adapted, and most of the characters in the book are not in the 1987 film.
But that film does have a following, and until you said it, I wasn’t even aware of how that film did. In the ‘80s, nobody really cared about that stuff. There wasn’t social media, and box office wasn’t the subject of fervent discussion within hours of release. Movies were just out. I love John Carpenter’s TheThing and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, but the fact of how they did or didn’t do didn’t affect my enjoyment of either.
You previously told the story of how Stephen King had to approve Glen Powell’s casting. Does King have this stipulation on all his adaptations? Or is it only on certain titles?
That is a good question. It might be a more recent thing. When he was starting out, he probably didn’t have those kinds of rights over the material, but I actually don’t know the answer to that. In terms of Glen, I don’t think he was completely aware of everything he’d done. So I was able to point him in the direction of a film that I thought summed up Glen at his best and showed what he could bring to this. That was Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, which Glen co-wrote. So I said to Stephen over email, “You should check out Hit Man.” But it hadn’t come out yet, so the producers got a link for Stephen to watch. And once he saw it, that was the end of that conversation.
The other thing was him having script approval, but my own experience with him has been fantastic. He’s been immensely supportive. Way back, 21 years ago, Stephen King gave us a press quote for Shaun of the Dead, and it was mind-blowing to me at the time that we got a rave from Stephen King on our poster. It was wild. I’ve then had this email correspondence with him over the years where he’d always be generous about my movies. He was really nice about BabyDriver and Last Night in Soho. But we would mostly email about music, and I would send him rock music recommendations. I’d sometimes send him vinyl on his birthday — bands like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Sunflower Bean and other things that I was into.
But what’s funny is that even though we had each other’s emails, I didn’t email him about Running Man until it was very close to happening. It would’ve been too heartbreaking if the film didn’t end up getting made and I had already gotten in touch with him. I didn’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. So I got in touch with him at the last minute when there was a script about to be potentially green lit, and it was a funny email to send because he must’ve known that I was working on it.
I sort of said, “As I know you are probably aware, I have been working on The Running Man since early ‘22.” (Laughs.) So he was really, really complimentary about the adaptation, and that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing, because it’s great that he loved it, but then you have to live up to that. When you’re making a movie, you’re trying to live up to the movie that’s in your head, but now I had to live up to the movie that’s in his head as well. So it definitely added extra pressure in terms of making the movie. It was like, “Ah, I’ve got to deliver for Stephen King.” But it’s a good pressure to have.
Director Edgar Wright and his Scott Pilgrim star Michael Cera reunite on the set of The Running Man.
Paramount Pictures
Do you recall his reaction to the Michael Cera section of the film?
In terms of the script and the movie, he talked about some specifics, but he mostly just talked about the movie overall. I spoke to him on the phone for the first time after he’d watched it. We’d only emailed over the years, and when he said he was watching it, I said, “Here’s my number. Call me afterwards.” Of course, it was very nerve-wracking knowing he, the original author, was going to watch it. “Oh my God, what is he going to say?” But he emailed me first before he called me, and the email I got after he watched the movie had the subject heading in all caps. It just said, “WOW.” And I thought, “Okay, this is a good start.”
So it was a really, really nice email, but then he said something in the email that I think is the best reaction you could get from the author. He said lots of nice things about the movie, but then he said, “It’s faithful enough to the novel that fans will be happy, but different enough that it kept me excited.” And I thought, “Well, I can’t ask for anything more than that.”
When I first saw the trailer without knowing the nature of the project, I thought it was saying that Arnold’s Ben Richards became so famous that he’s now the face of currency. But it’s actually President Arnold Schwarzenegger on $100 bills.
We thought of it as an alternate reality where they changed the rules so people born outside the United States could run for president.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s photographic cameo in The Running Man.
Paramount Pictures
Did you just feel obligated to show people a glimpse of him?
I thought it was a nice little nod [to the ‘87 film]. [Co-writer] Michael Bacall had written the idea about a new currency, “new dollars,” into the script. You only see the Arnold one in closeup, but we did all of the bills with different presidents. And I have to give credit to [screenwriter] Daniel Waters. It’s a shared joke with the DemolitionMan universe. In DemolitionMan, they mention President Schwarzenegger, so it’s my little shout out to both Arnie and Daniel Waters.
Who were your Edgar Wrights during post-production? Who gave you valuable feedback in the same way that you do for McQuarrie and other filmmakers?
Well, I’ve got to say there wasn’t as much feedback as usual because we hadn’t started making this movie a year ago. So I only watched it with the finished picture and sound just over a week ago. I’ve never made a movie that’s been finished this close to the release. When we were at CinemaCon in April, we hadn’t even started editing the movie. And believe me, I’m not complaining at all because this is the greatest job in the world and I’m very grateful to be working. But making this movie is the result of a lot of six- and seven-day weeks in the last year and 16- or 17-hour days. So we didn’t really have that many friends and family screenings at all because we didn’t have the time. Most of the time was spent gearing up to have test screenings, and we had two test screenings.
But I’ve done that before. On BabyDriver, I definitely remember Phil [Lord] and Chris [Miller] and Sam Mendes coming to see the movie. I think Ron Howard came to see the movie at one point as well. But in this case, we just didn’t have time. We would screen it for crew. We would just screen it amongst ourselves. We’d pour over shots and work on it each week so intensely, but you’ve also got to see it as a whole piece. In our editing suite in Soho, there’s a screening room next door, and when we could, we’d show it to the crew so everybody could see it on the big screen, not just on a shot-by-shot basis. So I’d love to say that there was a very starry friends-and-family screening, but there wasn’t time. Chris Macquarie hasn’t even seen it yet. [After this interview, Wright’s vast Rolodex of industry friends showed up for his Oct. 28 special screening, as well as the Nov. 9 premiere in New York.]
*** The Running Man opens in movie theaters on Nov. 14.
Glen Powell joins “CBS Mornings” to talk about his role in the new Paramount Pictures thriller “The Running Man,” which is based on a Stephen King novel. He talks about the physical demands and how King had to approve him for the role.
HBO’s genre dramas are often a big deal, and so far, Welcome to Derryis no exception.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, the first episode of the It prequel amassed 5.7 million cross-platform viewers over three days. It’s the third-biggest series debut in HBO history, coming behind the pilots for 2022’s House of the Dragon andThe Last of Us in 2023. In their first days alone, Dragon had nearly 10 million viewers, while Last had 4.7 million viewers and gained plenty more over the three-day period. (The finale to Last’s first season alone almost reached the same numbers as Dragon’s premiere.)
Most Welcome to Derry viewers caught onto the premiere after its initial Sunday night airing. Despite the show’s solid reviews, the episode itself caught attention online with its bloody ending, and it helped that it premiered shortly before Halloween. That twist took a lot of people by surprise—including HBO, as it turns out—and will likely get seats in butts for the remainder of the season.
Since Halloween fell on a Friday this year, the second Derry episode launched on HBO Max ahead of usual Sunday timeslot. HBO also released the show’s intro, made by production studio Filmograph. In a separate THR interview, executive producer/director Andy Muschietti called the title sequence a “descent into dread” as it features Pennywise luring in kids or observing chaotic events throughout the town’s history. The sequence “reflects our desire to show the big catastrophic events” referenced in Stephen King’s novel, continued Muschietti, and further leaned into Derry being “a place that’s seemingly wholesome, but there’s something dreadful under the surface.”
You can read more about the sequence’s creation here, and it’ll play before new episodes of Welcome to Derry every Sunday.
Stephen King hasn’t always been supportive of adaptations of his works that make major changes to them—Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the best-known example. But he’s also not unilaterally opposed to alterations; he was a fan of Cujo‘s more upbeat ending and was an even bigger fan of The Mist‘s far more devastating conclusion. Most recently, he gave a thumbs-up to the new finale of Edgar Wright’s Running Man.
And though It: Welcome to Derry is taking some liberties with one of his most beloved novels, building out a prequel for Pennywise and the Maine town terrorized by the evil clown, King gave the creators of HBO’s new series the green light.
“Well, we’re very happy, obviously, [to have] the blessing of Stephen King, who inspired this in the first place,” Andy Muschietti—an executive producer and director of several Welcome to Derry episodes; he also directed the two It feature films—said in a roundtable interview attended by io9. “[He’s] our biggest literary hero. It’s just phenomenal. That has been consistent all through this journey. He was very, very excited about this exploration, which departs so much—a lot of Welcome to Derry is taken from the book, but there’s a lot of storylines that are more of an answer to his questions. And that was like a kind of a leap of faith for us when we started this. And he was, you know, he was open and eager to see where we were going.”
Muschietti and his collaborator and sister Barbara Muschietti doubled down on that excitement in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, noting the author didn’t take an active hand in shaping Welcome to Derry‘s story.
“Stephen didn’t approach the show like that,” Andy Muschietti explained. “He wasn’t imposing any kind of guidelines on us. I think his desire was to let us play with his toys because from the beginning, we were clear to him. We said, ‘Your book is a mystery. It’s a puzzle and left unsolved intentionally. And we’re going to create a lot of stuff to bring those enigmas, and also to fill in the gaps in the puzzle.’ Eventually, this creates a story that’s not in the book. It’s a hidden story.”
Added Barbara Muschietti, “We wanted to do a show that basically went backwards, where each season was a cycle of Pennywise and he loved that concept and gave us all the rope we needed.”
It: Welcome to Derry will be floating into your nightmares very soon, and while the kids—Pennywise’s favorite feast—will be front and center, adult characters also take a prominent role in the story. Most folks we meet have been created for the HBO series, which is set in 1962 and is a prequel to the events of the It movies. But every Stephen King fan who’s ever checked into the Overlook Hotel knows Dick Hallorann.
Chris Chalk (The Newsroom, Shining Girls) plays the psychically gifted character—most famously seen in The Shining—in It: Welcome to Derry. As he told io9 at a recent HBO press day, he’s well aware of the legacy crafted by Scatman Crothers—who memorably portrayed Hallorann in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick movie—as well as Carl Lumbly (in 2019’s Doctor Sleep) and Melvin Van Peebles (in the 1997 Shining miniseries). But he’s here to present his own interpretation of the character.
“In order to create and manifest this version of Dick Halloran, I did observe those performances, but I didn’t—’study’ is too strong a word, because that’s not what we’re doing,” Chalk said. “If we were doing Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in 2025, then I’m going to study that performance in a different way, but all I have to do is see who he is now and break him down backwards to who he was in an earlier time, and then it becomes about creative freedom and the text. So it’s awesome to have all of these options of people who’ve had their versions of the performance, but just as they had their version, I knew I was going to get my version. Nobody asked me to mimic anybody.”
The younger version of Hallorann that we meet in It: Welcome to Derry is an airman stationed at the Air Force base just outside of town. This particular military installation has a fenced-off “Special Projects” area, where Hallorann’s abilities are pressed into service by General Shaw (James Remar). No spoilers on what they’re trying to accomplish, but Hallorann gets certain privileges due to his unique importance to the mission. The drawback is, all those mental gymnastics take a painful toll.
“I think the fact that Dick is even participating in this [mission] is proof that he’ll do anything to not be trapped,” Chalk said. “The worst thing he could possibly do to himself, he has to ultimately do in order to escape this idea of being trapped by General Shaw. He has to essentially assault himself and reopen trauma and reopen trauma and reopen trauma. But he wants to escape it so bad that he’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll cut myself if it’ll get me out of this.’ It’s a great thing to get to play a person at their weakest, most fragile, and most desperate points. Like, that’s what we want: to get to dig into the depths of a human.”
Elsewhere in the story, we encounter Hank Grogan, played by Stephen Rider (Daredevil, Luke Cage). He’s the single dad of young Ronnie (Amanda Christine) and the projectionist at Derry’s downtown movie theater. Early in It: Welcome to Derry, he’s dragged into some messy drama that ties into the show’s examination of America, circa 1962—a place full of problems even when there’s not a demonic clown in the picture.
Hank is a new character, but Rider had a lot of reference points even without pages from a King novel to consider.
“The thing about backstory is, it’s not like you’re going to tell it,” he explained. “It’s more about being very clear on his point of view and the world that he comes from and what he values. The fact that it’s the 1960s and he grew up in the 1920s and 1930s and where his parents came from, in terms of even slavery—it’s a lot to draw on. And most of us came up, or our parents came up, through the Great Migration. So there were a lot of things that I had access to. But backstories are tricky because they can become very fantastical. So if all of a sudden I’m like, ‘What do I do with this? It sounds good, but I don’t know what I’m doing with this.’ So I had to make sure it served Hank, not just Stephen’s fantastical world.”
More newcomers in It: Welcome to Derry are played by Jovan Adepo (3 Body Problem, The Leftovers) and Taylour Paige (The Toxic Avenger), though their last name is one It fans will recognize: Hanlon. As the show begins, Major Leroy Hanlon has just been transferred to Derry, with his wife, Charlotte, and their son, Will (Blake James), in tow.
Major Hanlon, we soon learn, has a quality that would be unique in any context, but it’s especially intriguing in a haunted place like Derry: he is literally a man without fear.
“It’s something that occurred through a brain injury, and I think it’s something that he wants to disregard every time someone brings it up, because it does recall a moment in his military career that he’s just not wanting to re-experience,” Adepo said. “I spoke to [director] Andy [Muschietti] about the specifics of the injury and what it truly means to be without fear in this town where the show is about being afraid. I leaned more on the side of not being completely immune to fear but just having a higher threshold for it. And if it’s the most guttural fear that I’m immune to, the other sub-elements of fear are heightened as far as, you know, insecurity, worry, doubt, shame, and any of those smaller elements of it. I never played Leroy as he’s just impervious to any type of jarring moments; he’s just able to withstand a bit more unless it’s something that he really, really cares about, which we can assume is his family.”
Charlotte was active in the civil rights movement in Louisiana, where the Hanlons lived before moving to Maine. Leroy would much rather his wife keep a low profile, especially since he’s trying to advance his military career. But Derry has its share of injustices that catch Charlotte’s interest, and it’s hard for her to resist speaking up for what’s right.
“I think she’s kind of bursting at the seams,” Paige said. “Living in that dissonance is very uncomfortable. Like you’re at home vacuuming and thinking about what to make for dinner, but you also have a sense that you have a lot to offer the world, and you’re curious and interested, and nobody really cares because you look like you. It’s a little bit sad, it’s lonely, it’s boredom, and it’s just living in a world that doesn’t respect or value what you have to offer. I think that’s a really tough inner world, so her inner world is challenging and lonely.”
She added, “I think Charlotte knows her husband’s heart is in the right place, but she’s also confronting [him about] defending a country [that hasn’t given us anything back], and that’s challenging. So [part of their marriage is] kind of understanding [that] this is our lives as Black people in 1962 and what opportunity means and how to kind of climb out of what you were born with.”
As Stephen King fans well know, Pennywise the Dancing Clown emerges every 27 years to feast on the people of Derry, especially the younger generation. That’s why It: Welcome to Derry takes place in 1962, 27 years before the 1989 events of Andy Muschietti’s 2017 It feature film, and 54 years before the 2016 setting of It Chapter Two.
The early ‘60s setting allows It: Welcome to Derry to tap into the broader cultural climate of the era, drawing on issues like the civil rights movement and Cold War dread. io9 recently participated in a press day for the new HBO show ahead of its arrival on October 26, speaking with Muschietti (a co-creator and executive producer on the series, in addition to being the director of multiple episodes) as well as writers, executive producers, and co-showrunners Brad Caleb Kane and Jason Fuchs.
“[1962] is part of the story because we are telling the story through Pennywise cycles. So it was unavoidable to go to ‘62; this is our first step into a bigger journey,” explained Muschietti. “Segregation was still around; racial problems [were] at the heart of every town in America, especially the South, but also in the North, as we see in Maine, in the story. And the Cold War [too].”
He continued. “It was actually exciting to talk about these things because it creates not only a look into history, but also dramatic opportunities [for] our characters … Also, ‘62 is very close to the original time [setting] of It, the book. When we did the movie adaptation, we transferred it to the ‘80s. And now we’re telling a prequel that happened in ‘62, but ‘62 is very close to 1958, which is [when the novel takes place]. So it’s a bit of going back to the original feeling of the book and trying to explore a little bit of that world with its own flavors and textures, and also the childhood of Stephen King.”
Kane elaborated on the setting in a separate interview with io9. “You can’t tell a story about an interdimensional being that exploits people’s fears in 1962 without addressing the great fears of the time and the great troubles of the time. We leaned into it,” he said.
“And 1962 is very much considered a time of Norman Rockwell’s America; it’s a time that’s idealized with great innocence. Obviously it wasn’t that way for everybody, but if you think of 1962 in America, before Kennedy was assassinated, as the last moment of innocence in this country, well, what happens when you scratch the surface of that innocence, that idealized time, and you find out what’s underneath? I think you’ll see something very different than the facade, and we tried to lean into that reality as well.”
While most of the show takes place in 1962, it also takes time to explore the deeper history of the Derry area. The local Native American population plays a major role in the new series, bringing in a perspective not represented in King’s original story or any of its previous adaptations.
“They’re the first people that met the monster, and they play a crucial role in the fight against it,” Muschietti teased. “There’s a part of the story that is not even in the book that is a crucial story point in this series, which tells us about the struggle of the Indigenous people against It, and that has tremendous ripple effects on generations to come.”
Kane expanded on why the Indigenous storyline was so important to include in It: Welcome to Derry. “We wanted to go back to the origins of the creature—and we wanted to talk about the stewards of the land. The Indigenous people have lived with this evil much longer than anybody else, having been here longer than anyone else, and they understand that evil is not something that you can necessarily defeat,” he said.
“It’s a constant; it’s a reality in life. It needs to be addressed; it needs to be confronted and understood, most importantly, and in lieu of destroying it, it needs to be contained properly. And that’s what the Indigenous people in Derry seek to do in the story. So we felt that was an important perspective. And obviously, if we’re thinking about Derry as a microcosm of America, you can’t tell America’s story without the Indigenous perspective. And I think that was an important reason for us to do it.”
While the Indigenous characters form a key part of It: Welcome to Derry, the show also aims for a microcosm feel—as Kane suggested, noting King originated the idea of looking at Derry through that lens. We spend time with the kids as they realize there’s a monster in their midst. But we also get to know their parents and other adults in town, as well as the soldiers stationed on the military base nearby. It’s a lot of cards to stack, but co-showrunners Kane and Fuchs didn’t see it as a challenge.
“I think we saw it much more as an opportunity,” Fuchs said. “TV is obviously long-form storytelling and so we had a chance to delve into different perspectives in a way that the two hours of a movie just doesn’t allow you to. We were really excited to get to see grown-up characters who were more aware of the entity than the grown-ups we meet in the context of the films. We were excited to go into different communities. We hadn’t really seen Derry or It through the perspective of the Indigenous community, and it was an opportunity to also get a group of characters at the center of this, the Hanlon family, who are new to Derry, to really provide a way in for new fans who maybe haven’t read the book or seen the films. We have a family at the core of this adventure who are being introduced to the world of Derry themselves for the first time. It was all by design and something we’re really excited about; it felt like this was an opportunity for something a little different.”
While the show draws on a fair amount of new material, the fact that it’s a prequel means viewers have a good idea of what happens next—including the fact that Pennywise has more cycles on the way. Crafting a satisfying ending for viewers who already know the monster won’t be defeated took a certain nuanced approach.
“The benefit of long-form storytelling is really that you can dive into character a lot more deeply. And we’re introducing a whole new set of characters in this than we saw in the movies,” Kane said. “But we try to rip the rug out from underneath people right away so you never know what’s going to happen. You never know what to expect; you never know who you can come to care for that’s not going to be wrenched away from you. We want to give the audience that feeling: to imbue you with love for these new characters and make you fear for their safety.”
“And really, that’s the ride we’re taking. It’s not necessarily, ‘Will It be defeated in the end or not?’ but ‘Will these characters survive? Will they learn lessons? Will they grow up? Will the parents see their children again? Will the evil plan that’s being hatched as the engine of this piece be enacted in some way, or will that snap back on the person enacting it?’”
Kane continued. “We wanted to tell a story about unity and about innocence lost, just like the main themes of the book. Growing up and realizing that fear and hatred and all that stuff can only be really defeated through community and through love and through growth. We try to do all that with the characters, and that kind of journey makes it a lot more expansive than just, ‘Will It be defeated or not?’ We’re trying to paint a story on a much larger canvas.”
It: Welcome to Derry expands what fans know about Pennywise’s history in quite a few aspects, but it’s careful not to shine too bright of a light on things. As Fuchs explained, revealing details but also keeping some of that mystery intact was a delicate task.
“It was a constant balancing act—how much to reveal, how much to keep hidden. I think that what’s great about the richness of Stephen King’s mythology is that the more answers to mysteries you reveal, the more new mysteries suggest themselves,” Fuchs said. “So yeah, Brad and I wanted to know more about It. We wanted to understand why a being like It remains in Derry when it’s a creature of light. It could travel anywhere. Why Derry? We wanted to understand why a shape-shifter who has a virtually infinite number of forms it could take continues to take the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.”
“So you’re going to get, I hope, really satisfying answers to some of those things in the context of the show. But the answers themselves suggest fresh mysteries and new questions. And that’s part of the fun of the genre and of Stephen King’s mythology. You can always go deeper and deeper.”
It: Welcome to Derry hits HBO October 26, bringing Pennywise the Clown out of the sewer to feast on a new generation of children. It remains to be seen if Derry will rank among the scariest Stephen King adaptations—we have a feeling it might—but there are still plenty of chilling movies and TV releases that draw on King’s prolific output to make your nights as sleepless as possible.
10. Cujo (1983)
Based on King’s 1981 novel about a St. Bernard who transforms from a gentle pooch into a vicious, violent monster after tangling with a rabid bat, the 1983 movie makes a few key plot changes, including softening the ending. However, the movie is still deeply unsettling, with the dangers of being trapped in a car with no water on a scorching day very nearly eclipsing the terror of a stalking beast.
Genre superstar Dee Wallace (The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Critters) gives a ferocious performance as a mom who’ll do anything to protect her son—one of those “Oscar-ignored” horror turns for the ages.
9. The Monkey (2025)
Osgood Perkins’ take on King’s cursed-toy tale (a short story first released in 1980) leans heavily into pitch-black comedy, but it’s still unnerving between all the nervous chuckling. Estranged since childhood, twin brothers (both played by Theo James) unhappily reunite when the cymbal-crashing simian that destroyed their youth resurfaces—but really, The Monkey’s main purpose is for the viewer to cringe in their seat as the tension builds between kills, each death more gruesomely Rube Goldberg-ian than the last.
8. Creepshow (1982)
We’re playing a little fast and loose with “adaptation” here; King wrote the screenplay, which does adapt a few of his short stories but also features new material. Like The Monkey, it’s a horror comedy—paying loving tribute to the splattery legacy of EC horror comics—but with George A. Romero behind the camera, it also unloads plenty of frights.
King himself stars in one of the anthology’s segments, playing a goofy farmer whose close encounter with a meteor results in some intense, plant-based body horror. But the standout shocks come from the creature horror of “The Crate” and buggy revenge howler “They’ll Creep Up on You.”
7. Salem’s Lot (1979)
Just four years after King’s source-material novel came out, Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) directed what’s still the best screen version of the author’s oft-adapted small-town vampire story. The two-part miniseries digs into not just the bloodsucker takeover, but also why Salem’s Lot—a seemingly idyllic Maine town, not unlike a little place called Derry—is such an ideal setting for a creeping outbreak of evil.
Hooper’s version makes a key alteration, changing the look of King’s head vampire character into something more ghoulish than originally described, but it makes sense—by making the viewer recoil when the unexpected, visually striking image appears. Also, apologies to Sinners, but Salem’s Lot still wins for the most spine-chilling “invite me in” scene of all time.
6. Carrie (1976)
King’s first published novel (1974) became his first adapted work, and not only are we still seeing tons of King adaptations coming every year, Carrie itself has also gone through many iterations (with a Mike Flanagan series on the way as we speak). But Brian De Palma’s film weaves its own spell in ways that’ve never been eclipsed, thanks to Sissy Spacek’s towering lead performance, the effectively jarring use of split-screen to bring the bloody prom scene to life, and one of horror’s best and earliest examples of a jump-scare finale.
5. The Mist (2007)
As this list has already demonstrated, many filmmakers have chosen to alter King’s prose to create a more effective screen story. But nowhere is that more searing and horrifying than in Frank Darabont’s 2007 take on King’s 1980 novella. Darabont, of course, is also the director behind some of the most uplifting King movies ever—The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)—but The Mist just might be the most feel-bad movie of all time. That’s a testament to the tension it builds and the characters you meet as the titular fog envelops a small Maine community—building up to a devastating ending that will haunt you.
4. It (2017)
We will always love Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance in the 1990 miniseries, but Andy Muschietti’s big-screen adaptation of the first half of King’s sprawling 1986 novel turns the screws in so many dreadfully alarming ways that Bill Skarsgard’s buck-toothed clown is just one fearsome element. Not for nothing is the kid-centric film the more agonizing of Muschietti’s duology; there’s something plainly terrifying about seeing coming-of-age stories that are already backgrounded in depressing home lives compounded by an insatiable supernatural entity.
3. Pet Sematary (1989)
The whole movie could just be furious, tendon-slashing, returned-from-the-grave toddler Gage and the shudder-inducing flashbacks featuring the dreadful Zelda, and it would be top five on this list. That Mary Lambert’s film (adapted from King’s 1983 novel) manages to couch those eerily resonant elements in a movie that constantly teeters on the edge—of despair, sanity, and the next terrible choice made out of sheer hopelessness—is no small achievement.
2. Misery (1990)
The 1987 book is unsettling; the 1990 Rob Reiner movie, starring James Caan as a best-selling author kidnapped by a deranged fan (Kathy Bates), is a thrilling masterpiece. Bates’ well-deserved Oscar for bringing the unhinged Annie Wilkes to life feels like payback for all the horror performances ignored by major awards over the years, and the “hobbling” scene still stings no matter how many times you watch it.
1. The Shining (1980)
King famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of his 1977 novel (speaking of page-to-screen changes, this one’s got quite a few)—but fans of the movie would be forgiven for suspecting the author is the only hater of this cinematic classic. Jack Nicholson’s performance as Jack Torrance is frightening, but it’s the Overlook Hotel itself—its mind tricks, its ghostly inhabitants, its troublesome elevators, its gorgeously nonsensical architecture—that makes the film practically vibrate with evil.
Did we miss your favorite scary King movie or TV show? Share your favorites in the comments.
We’re just a few weeks away from the arrival of It: Welcome to Derry, but fans at San Diego Comic-Con this summer and this past weekend’s New York Comic Con have gotten some early glimpses of what to expect from the Stephen King series. At SDCC, HBO revealed the show’s very first scene, and io9 was lucky enough to be there—though we’ve been haunted by it ever since.
With It: Welcome to Derry‘s premiere dropping October 26, everyone will soon get to feast their eyeballs on the harrowing sequence. And It and It Chapter Two helmer Andy Muschietti, co-creator of the HBO series as well as the director of several episodes, is here to explain/warn you about the thinking behind its opening.
“We wanted to raise the bar higher in terms of shock value,” Muschietti told Deadline. “It’s about a self-imposed mandate of opening with an event that is shocking enough that you put the audience in a position where nothing is taken for granted, where nothing is safe in this world.”
He continued. “You’re immediately putting people on the edge of the seat. We needed a strong opening. One of the things I love about this scene is the build-up. Of course, it has a big, graphic, and shocking conclusion, but the build-up is something that was important.”
That’s quite a build-up to the build-up—but we’re here to tell you the scene does not disappoint. io9 will have more from Andy Muschietti and his producing partner and sister Barbara Muschietti, as well as other cast and crew of It: Welcome to Derry, as the hour of Pennywise approaches.
Horror fans have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Pennywise the Clown. The Stephen King creation takes many forms, but he exists to inspire terror in his victims before demolishing them, and his most effective and recognizable guise involves a frilly costume, glowing eyes, and a mouth full of way too many razor-sharp teeth.
That’s why this new NECA figure tied to HBO’s upcoming prequel seriesIt: Welcome to Derry is so disconcerting. This is not the Pennywise we’re used to running into in the sewers!
First, and most startlingly, the figure shows a human countenance beneath the clown wig. And the face below that receding hairline is… surprisingly gentle-looking?
As NECA’s website reports, this is the It: Welcome to Derry “Ultimate Bob Gray as Pennywise” seven-inch scale action figure. If you’re more of a casual It fan, “Bob Gray” may not ring any bells, but diehards will know the name. And it seems, at least according to NECA, we’ll be meeting him in the flesh in HBO’s new series:
“Before Pennywise was a demonic clown, he was Bob Gray, a circus performer playing a clown onstage. Based on the show’s flashback scenes, this 7-inch scale figure includes multiple interchangeable heads and hands, stage props, flowers, wooden beaver, wig, and wig stand.”
We did know that Welcome to Derry would be tapping into flashbacks to set the scene in Derry, circa 1962, but getting to see Pennywise the Clown before he became entwined with an entity of evil feels like a pretty big reveal. And that’s not all; the figure includes clown faces that make one of horror’s greatest villains appear alternately gentle, sad, and happy.
Here’s all the accessories the “Ultimate Bob Gray as Pennywise” comes with. A clown is not a clown without his sidekick wooden beaver, after all.
Want a Bob Gray of your own to remind you that even child-chomping monsters might not have been such baddies to begin with? You can preorder now ($38, ships in 2026) at NECA’s website.
How big of a spoiler for Welcome to Derry this collectible is remains to be seen, but Pennywise himself—played in the show by the returning Bill Skarsgård—has barely been glimpsed in any of its official marketing thus far.
If you prefer your Pennywise as a bloody beast, NECA has you covered with a far more ghoulish 7″ version available for pre-order here. Less gory but also way bigger at 18″ tall is this take on the balloon-bearing menace.
It: Welcome to Derry premieres October 26 on HBO. Will Bob Gray turn up with his beaver and wig stand? NECA seems pretty sure.
When it comes to spreading propaganda, no one does it better than the Republicans and Trump allies.
Time and again, the radical group of individuals have desperately attempted to mobilise groups of people for their selfish interests, causing division and dispute in an already divided U.S. state. Unfortunately, their plan has mostly worked till now. However, there are still some people who see him and his allies as they are: hate-inciting, dictatorship-promoting, racist, sexist, transphobic, xenophobic, and anti-minority bigots.
It is not just the general public who are speaking against Trump and his government; it is also people in power who do not align themselves with him. Prominent among them is American author Stephen King, known for writing books such as The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. King has been a vocal supporter of the Democrats, endorsing several politicians from the party during the presidential elections over the years. He has also been open about his criticism of Trump, with him being one of the few people who had signed a letter opposing his participation during the 2016 presidential elections.
King, doing justice to his surname, is yet again expressing disdain over Trump and his unparliamentary methods of exercising control over U.S. citizens. Not only that, he is also calling out those who support him.
The one thing you haven’t heard from Democrats in the midst of all their raving histrionics: telling their radical base to stop violently assaulting ICE agents.
The doxing, murder threats and violent attacks are soaring. Just days ago a sniper tried to assassinate multiple ICE…
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has never shied away from echoing the words of his Dorito-brained boss. Time and again, he has taken to social media, especially X (previously Twitter), to express his views on critical issues and to blame the opposition for everything. On October 4, 2025, Miller, through a post on X, accused the Democrats of doing all the things the Republicans under Trump’s rule have been doing since he came to power in 2025. He wrote in the post:
“The issue before is now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”
He did not stop there, as he continued to suggest a line of action that includes the use of “legitimate state power” to “dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” Naturally, Miller’s comments did not sit right with Stephen King, who jumped into the conversation, condemning him for his misguided views. He wrote:
“Sorry, Steve–The Constitution isn’t far left or far right. It’s the basis on our democracy, and you’re playing the terror card to try and overturn it. Won’t work.”
In just over a month, Edgar Wright’s new take on TheRunning Man will be out, and it’ll have some changes to source material. This also includes its conclusion, and if you don’t want to know how the original book ended, you should go no further.
At the end of the 1979 novel, Ben Richards—portrayed in the new film by Glen Powell—learns his wife and daughter were killed, leading to him using a plane to kill himself and the Games Network that runs the titular bloodsport. An ending like that would probably court unwanted attention, and Wright told UK outlet Film Stories that he and co-writer Michael Bacall “knew at the outset that [the novel’s ending] wasn’t going to be part of this adaptation.”
Thus, a new ending was crafted, but the specifics are under wraps. A change like that required King’s signoff, and Wright candidly called the day the script was sent off “possibly the most nerve-wracking day of the entire production.” But King was high on the entire script and had no qualms about switching things up: Wright felt King knew a change was in the air, and recalled him being “very curious” about how the ending would be approached. “He said we did a ‘great job,’ so I was very happy with that,” said Wright.
On some level, this isn’t too surprising, since the 1987 version of The Running Man also changed the ending so Richards and Amber Mendez go to kiss after Killian died on live TV. It’s also not the only King adaptation to deviate from the source material in that way, as The Long Walk also takes a sharp divergence, and longtime fans of King can likely name every change in the films and shows based on his work.
We’ll see how The Running Man sticks the landing with its new ending when it hits theaters November 14.
Fans are eager to learn about The Long Walk’s digital and streaming release dates. Directed by Francis Lawrence, The Long Walk is based on Stephen King’s book of the same name. The movie hit theaters on September 12, 2025. But for those who want to rent, buy, or stream it, here are all the currently available details on when it can be watched from home.
When will The Long Walk get its digital release date?
Based on Lionsgate’s previous digital releases, the movie could be available on premium video on demand (PVOD) three to four weeks after its theatrical release. This means the movie may be available to rent somewhere between early and mid-October.
This pattern would fall in line with the digital release dates of Lionsgate’s other big 2025 movies, Flight Risk and From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Both films had their digital releases within three weeks of their theatrical releases. However, the digital release date for The Long Walk may vary based on its performance in theaters.
Here’s when The Long Walk could be released on streaming
Lionsgate releases its movies for streaming anywhere between three and four months after their theatrical release dates. This puts the streaming release date window for The Long Walk between late December 2025 and early January 2026.
The movie is likely to stream on STARZ, which has an exclusive deal with Lionsgate for streaming their films. While The Long Walk may not be limited to STARZ, it is certainly set to hit the streaming service first before arriving on any other platforms. Both Flight Risk and World of John Wick: Ballerina took over four months to be available for streaming.
The story of The Long Walk takes place in a dystopian future where a group of teenage boys takes part in an annual stamina event called The Long Walk. The contestants must walk at a minimum speed of 4 miles per hour without stopping, and if they do, they’ll be shot dead. The last one remaining will be awarded “The Prize.”
The film stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, and Tut Nyuot, among many others, with Mark Hamill as The Major.
Better Tagline: “This new Klondike Bar campaign sucks.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Every year, a young man from each of the 50 states embarks on the Long Walk. The boys assembled this year include Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), Pete DeVries (David Jonsson), and Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), who form a friendship of sorts, which complicates the fact that there’s only one winner. Any Walker who drops below three miles an hour gets three warnings before their “ticket” is punched. The winner is basically granted a wish, and Garraty has plans for his. “Critical” Analysis: Does dystopian fiction still work if we’re already living in a dystopia?
The alternative timeline The Long Walk is set in is no picnic. Perceived enemies of the state are taken from their homes and given a choice: service in the “Squads” or a bullet to the head. The postwar economy is in shambles, and the resident dictator (The Major, played un-memorably by Mark Hamill) promises to make the country number one again.
I trust none of this is disturbingly familiar.
Stephen King’s original novella was itself a barely veiled metaphor for Vietnam, written in reaction to the televised draft lottery, but the movie — while evidently set in the mirror universe1970s — reflects current events in other ways. Well-meaning people might say, “Society would never tolerate an event like this where young people are needlessly gunned down.” Some of those same people would still vote against regulating firearms even after kids were shot in a school or church.
Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, several of the Hunger Games…es) and screenwriter JT Mollner had to make some choices in adapting Stephen King’s story. They’ve truncated the number of kids from 100 to 50, for one, and removed many of the (meager) references to the wider world (shout out to Orange Julius).
As with most of King’s work, a fair bit gets lost in the translation from page to screen. Much of the novella takes place in Garraty’s head; thoughts of his girlfriend and mom, and loss, and patterns of life and death. It’s not very easy to shoehorn into a movie (or a miniseries, if the latest calamitous attempt to adapt The Stand is any indication).
And in going with fewer Walkers, certain characters are excluded, others merged (“lean Buddha” Stebbins gets Scramm’s pneumonia, for example). What hasn’t changed is DeVries’ role as Garraty’s garrulous companion, though Lawrence clearly didn’t have time for the character’s amateur theology). Jonsson is the high point here, as DeVries modulates the often hysterical Garraty and is given the most compelling backstory.
Hoffman, so disarming in Licorice Pizza, is fine here. But he isn’t a great fit for Garraty, even with the additional motivation Lawrence and Mollner give the character. However, they do delve into what we’ve probably all considered (at least I know I have): being the subjects of our own story. Bad things — tickets getting punched, etc. — happen to other people. The idea of being the principal protagonist has gotten more traction in the age of FPS games and online anonymity, but The Long Walk attempts to bring that unreality a little more immediacy.
The conundrum of how to consistently adapt Stephen King for the screen continues. Lawrence and company have condensed a meditation on mortality and the hopelessness of adolescence into a quest for vengeance.
There’s something about a favorite author or figure sharing their simple lists of favorite things. On a random Monday in September, legendary scribe Stephen King decided to hop on his keyboard and grace fans with his list of personal favorite movies. And yes, King, truly, we’ll take these crumbs.
In a post on X, the author provided insight into the kind of films he enjoys. Fans will no doubt find gems in the genre-spanning set of curated works, which include Hollywood classics, noir standards, comedies, and early blockbusters. He excludes adaptations of his own work, though he does name some favorites as a result of that.
The post reads:
My 10 favorite movies (excluding MISERY, SHAWSHANK, GREEN MILE, STAND BY ME). In no particular order: SORCERER GODFATHER 2 THE GETAWAY GROUNDHOG DAY CASABLANCA TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE JAWS MEAN STREETS CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3rd KIND DOUBLE INDEMNITY
It’s really film curriculum to study in order to get insight on what makes a popcorn flick for King. Two Roy Scheider performances stand out: the heart of darkness explored in William Friedkin’s bleak Sorcerer and, of course, Spielberg’s shark-induced mass hysteria he fights in Jaws. And it’s awesome to see the other Steven in this list multiple times, as the cinematic contemporary to King’s own genre-spanning works inspires the inclusion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Makes us wonder if King’s books might feature in Spielberg’s favorite written works at all. And it’s worth noting how great it is to see that the horror maestro’s sense of humor skewers in the vein of Groundhog Day, which in its own way is a nightmare scenario to live in.
The film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, directed by Francis Lawrence, will be released in theaters on September 12. This will make it one of the longest gaps ever between a King publication and a film version, but there is no better time because of the toxic state of masculinity,
The Long Walk is set in a fascist dystopia sometime in the near future similar to The Running Man. Every year, 100 teenage boys are selected from a group of volunteers to participate in the titular walk. The rules are simple: you walk until you die. Fall below a certain speed three times in three hours, and a soldier shoots you. The last one still walking wins an absurd amount of money and a single wish, anything that can possibly be granted.
King published The Long Walk in July 1979 under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, but it’s actually one of King’s first novels. He wrote it in 1966-67, a teenage boy himself and a freshman at the University of Maine. Understanding what happened in that decade-ish gap offers a lot of insight into what the book is actually about.
When King was writing the book he had two things on his mind; girls and the Vietnam War. MIllions of boys were being drafted into battle, often returning traumatized and maimed if they were lucky to get back at all. And yet, there was a potent sense of the masculine surrounding the doomed conflict. Sure, Charlie might kill you. but think of the unimpeachable machismo that you would earn! You were a blooded man, not some namby-pamby commie.
It wasn’t until I watched a YouTube essay by The Book & Movie Guy called “The Emasculation of King” that I remembered just how obsessed with masculinity The Long Walk is. It had been at least a decade since I read it, but I still recalled the constant homosexual undertones among the boys as they bonded over the death march. The video pointed out main character Ray’s constant thoughts of sex, and how part of the reason he joined the walk was to prove his manhood to his girlfriend, a strict Catholic who believed in abstinence before marriage.
Ray is mirrored by the friend he makes on the walk, Pete. Pete is also suffering from a conscience of masculinity. An attempt to run away with his girlfriend and start new lives led only to poverty and mutual hatred. Pete says she made him feel like a failure, and that’s why he’s on the walk. He has something to prove.
The Vietnam War and its ravenous appetite for boys may be long over, but that twisted sense of masculinity is back stronger than ever. More than 90 percent of mass shooters are straight cis men, and the overwhelming majority of them have histories of violence or antipathy toward women. Whether it’s incel ideology, fear of race mixing and white genocide, or some other reason, mass shootings in America are continuously linked to the idea of men needing to assert themselves as dominant and strong.
This is also shown in the rise of masculinity grifters like Andrew Tate. Millions of teenage boys flock to Tate and others like him, drawn to the idea that violence and domination will restore feelings of masculinity. Boys don’t feel like men. Gun manufacturers, extremists, and grifters are willing to sell them that feeling, or at least an illusion of it.
The Long Walk is a potent allegory for this time in history. Almost all of the boys on the walk are trying to be something they feel society is denying them. The fascist dystopia makes life hard and people poor. Times are tough, and the next generation of men feel like losers denied their birthright. Sound familiar, here in the hospice era of capitalism and oligarchy?
So the boys participate in this barbaric ritual, all entirely of their free will. They sell their lives and their bodies for a fleeting moment of adulation and the promise of power over others. If they outwalk the other 99, they will have the money and the clout to never feel emasculated again. If they don’t, they’ll die a hero.
That mindset is lurking in the fevered mind of every cryptobro and daily grind mindset guru. It’s what makes people being hurt by Trump policies wave a MAGA flag despite that pain. This bottomless need for masculinity affirmation is dragging the entire world behind it on metaphorical long walk, and people are dropping like flies to justify it.
I doubt that The Long Walk will change many minds or help men see that chasing masculinity is fool’s deal. It is, however, a story from a half century past that is even more meaningful today. Maybe, just maybe, someone will see the reflection of our world in its terrifying story and step off the road.
Stephen King had one condition for the film adaptation of his book, The Long Walk: he wanted a lot of brutal violence.
During a recent interview with The Times U.K., the prolific author criticized the way violence is depicted in superhero movies, such as some in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Studios. Oftentimes, those films don’t show the realistic, gory consequences of violence, despite there being a lot of destruction.
“If you look at these superhero movies, you’ll see … some supervillain who’s destroying whole city blocks but you never see any blood,” King said. “And man, that’s wrong. It’s almost, like, pornographic.”
He added of the way violence is presented in The Long Walk, “I said, if you’re not going to show it, don’t bother. And so they made a pretty brutal movie.”
The Long Walk, based on King’s 1979 dystopian horror novel, follows a group of teenage boys who compete in an annual contest known as “The Long Walk,” where they must maintain a certain walking speed or get killed. The last remaining walker wins the contest. The movie was directed by Francis Lawrence, with a script penned by JT Mollner.
Superhero movies will typically avoid graphic violence to appeal to a broader audience, including families and younger viewers. However, there have also been plenty of R-rated superhero pics released that don’t hold back on bloody violence, such as 2024’s Kraven the Hunter, the Deadpool films, 1998’s Blade, 2021’s The Suicide Squad and 2019’s Hellboy, among others.
