New Reality Show Is Basically the Stephen King Novel The Running Man

[jimmy olsen]

I really should read that book one day.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/03/16/ben_affleck_and_matt_damon_have_a_new_reality_show_the_runner.html

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's New Reality Show Is Basically the Stephen King Novel The Running Man

By Matthew Dessem


The terrifying casting website forThe Runner.
therunnercasting.com

Deadline reported Wednesday that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are producing a new reality show for Verizon's Go90 mobile video network. The show, called The Runner, will feature a contestant trying to make their way across the country without being caught by a team of pursuers or the audience. If that sounds familiar, it should: Affleck and Damon tried to produce the show for ABC more than a decade ago, before the network decided the whole hunt-a-fugitive-across-America theme was in bad taste after September 11. But times change, and what seemed like a dystopian nightmare in 2001 now seems, well, still pretty dystopian!


In fact, the rules of Affleck and Damon's show sound an awful lot like an actual fictional dystopia: Stephen King's 1982 novel The Running Man (not to be confused with the Schwarzenegger adaptation, where the game has different rules) about a TV show called, well, The Running Man. Here, for instance, is how Deadline describes The Runner:

On The Runner, where the top prize is $1 million, one person, the chosen "Runner," attempts to make it across the U.S. unnoticed over the course of 30 days while following clues about his or her itinerary, including mandated checkpoints.

And here's a producer explaining the rules of The Running Man in Stephen King's novel:

"The rules are simplicity themselves. You—or your surviving family—will win one hundred New Dollars for each hour you remain free. We stake you to forty-eight hundred dollars conning money on the assumption that you will be able to fox the Hunters for forty-eight hours. The unspent balance refundable, of course, if you fall before the forty-eight hours are up. You're given a twelve-hour head start. If you last thirty days, you win the Grand Prize. One billion New Dollars."

Those "Hunters" King mentions show up in the new show, except they're now called "Chasers." (Theoretically, they're supposed to "capture" the Runner, not "murder" him or her—but the rules are still in flux!) King's Running Man was required to send the show video updates twice daily; Deadline assures us that The Runner will go further: "Real-time video updates are provided on Go90 throughout the game, with multiple updates released each day."

But the most terrifying aspect of The Running Man was that the show enlisted all of North America in hunting the contestant, as the producer explained:

"...there's an 800 number for anyone who spots you. A verified sighting pays one hundred New Dollars. A sighting which results in a kill pays a thousand."

As it happens, The Runner will tap into the same stoolpigeon spirit: "People at home can play along on Go90 in real time and provide tips and information that can help capture the Runner for cash rewards."

If that sounds like fun—or, if, like The Running Man's protagonist, your child's medical expenses have left you desperate for money—you might be right for The Runner!

[Eddie Teach]

Sounds like a show Britain's already done.

[Brazen]

Sounds like a show Britain's already done.

Yep.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hunted

[Martinus]

This sounds like a spoof or a political arts project - Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are known lilly-leftists.

[Berkut]

As long as it would not involve any actual running, I would be an awesome contestant.

[lustindarkness]

So the general public can help hunt them down? How about helping them?

[Eddie Teach]

So the general public can help hunt them down? How about helping them?

Sure, but you don't get the cash that way.

[The Brain]

I think there was a similaresque show on Swedish TV.

[lustindarkness]

So the general public can help hunt them down? How about helping them?

Sure, but you don't get the cash that way.

I was just wondering if there was a way to sabotage the show help the contestants.

[Barrister]

Sounds an awful lot like a Canadian reality show Mantracker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantracker

They made a big deal of it being out in the wilderness, but in an episode shot in the Yukon I could recognize landmarks that showed it was within Whitehorse's city limits.

Mind you the city of limits of Whitehorse are yuuge and do encompass some pretty natural terrain, but still - you could walk balk to civilization at any point.

[Berkut]

I like how it is "a lot like the Running Man" except that they don't kill you.

I think that is kind of a key factor in the comparison though...

[Admiral Yi]

Anyone remember that Onion piece about a company in Vegas with strippers in bikinis you would chase and shoot with paint guns?

[Josephus]

Sounds like a book by Richard Bachman. 

[Capetan Mihali]

Sounds like a book by Richard Bachman. 

Yeah, I don't know who this "Stephen King" guy is, might be R.B.'s current nom de plume so he can write really fucked-up horror books without losing his credibility.

All the Bachman books are worth a read.  Or at least I found them very profound dystopian novellas back when I read my uncle's copy c. age 14.

[Josephus]

Sounds like a book by Richard Bachman. 

Yeah, I don't know who this "Stephen King" guy is, might be R.B.'s current nom de plume so he can write really fucked-up horror books without losing his credibility.

All the Bachman books are worth a read.  Or at least I found them very profound dystopian novellas back when I read my uncle's copy c. age 14.

I was a huge King/Bachman fan at one time, but I think being a teenager when I read most of them had a lot to do with that. Not sure if they stand the test of time, or at least of my getting old