The Running Man is a 1987 American dystopian action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Yaphet Kotto, and Jesse Ventura. The film is set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, featuring a television show where convicted criminal "runners" must escape death at the hands of professional killers. It is loosely based on the 1982 novel The Running Man written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.