This article contains slight spoilers for The Running Man.
The 1987 movie The Running Man may be a delightfully weird bit of Arnold Schwarzenegger cheese, but it doesn’t have much to do with the 1982 novel that Stephen King published under the pen name Richard Bachman. For his 2025 adaptation, Edgar Wright has tried to stick closer to the source material, but he couldn’t resist winking to his predecessor.
Early in the new movie, Bobby T (Colman Domingo), the charismatic host of the television show The Running Man, tells protagonist Ben Richards (Glen Powell) and his fellow contestants Laughlin (Katy O’Brian) and Jansky (Martin Herlihy) about the huge cash rewards they win for each day they stay alive. To illustrate the point, one of the women on stage flashes a handful of highly-coveted new dollars, each emblazoned with Arnold’s image.
“I thought it was a nice little nod,” Wright admitted to The Hollywood Reporter, in which he also recalled his admiration to the 1987 movie. “[Co-writer] Michael Bacall had written the idea about a new currency, ‘new dollars,’ into the script.” While Wright intended to cameo to be a nod to the previous version of The Running Man, he also notes that the fact that Arnold is portraying a president references a different beloved movie from the era. “It’s a shared joke with the Demolition Man universe,” he explained; “In Demolition Man, they mention President Schwarzenegger, so it’s my little shout out to both Arnie and Daniel Waters [screenwriter of Demolition Man].”