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Did You Know?: THE RUNNING MAN was a REAL gameshow!

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Written by Dr. Jose

Imagine a dystopian, totalitarian future full of fear, violence, and running. Lots of running.

No, I’m not talking about our current state of affairs (ha-ha *collar pull*). I’m talking about Stephen King’s hit sci-fi novel, The Running Man. Written in 1982 and set in 2025*, King’s vision of the future is a grim, if not prescient, one: the worldwide economy is completely wrecked, violence is at an all-time high, and the country exists in a culturally-censored police state**. For entertainment, people tune in to a new reality game show called The Running Man – a show where contestants travel all over the world to escape the assassins who were hired to kill them. If they survive 30 days, they win freedom and the grand prize of one billion dollars. Only thing is: no one has survived longer than a week.

In a prime example of life imitating art (or is it art imitating life?), a Berlin-based production company ExtraMile was so inspired by King’s story, they decided to make it a reality – and in August of 2000, they did just that.

The concept was the brainchild of triathlon athlete, Alexander Skora, and was broadcast over the then-burgeoning internet at “RealityRun.com”. Viewers followed along as Roger, a Dutch gym teacher, did his best to avoid getting spotted by his would-be captors. If Roger was able to go undetected for 24 days, he’d win the grand prize of $10,000. If he was caught before then, his captor would claim the reward. Here’s the wild part: anyone and everyone could be a potential capturer. Spectators observed Roger’s whereabouts via the RealityRun website, which gave out clues and hints as to his location, and they were encouraged to seek him out and take his potential winnings.

Coincidentally, much like the contestants in The Running Man, poor Roger only lasted a week out in the wild: a young German woman spotted him in a library, nabbed him, and won the grand prize of $10,000. Roger walked away without any money, but at least he was still alive.

The internet show proved to be somewhat of a hit. After a bit of rule-tweaking (mainly, lowering the survival span from 24 days to a mere week), subsequent “episodes” took place in the United States. The idea was to have all the winners from the cumulative episodes converge in a “Mega-RealityRun” winner-take-all grand finale, for the grand prize of $100,000. There was even talks of turning the web-based program into a TV show. Unfortunately, the contest was to take place on September 10th, 2001. Any plans for a reality show about people hunting a fugitive were scrapped in the wake of September 11th, 2001.

Strangely enough, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were trying to get their own identical reality show, The Runner, off the ground at the same time RealityRun was being eyed at for network TV.  After 15 years of laying dormant, the show finally premiered online in July 2016. A second season is in the works.

* The movie version, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, takes place in 2017 – which is just a liiiitttle too spooky for me.

** I don’t know what’s scarier: the fact that Stephen King predicted reality shows almost 20 years before they became a thing, or that he predicted our current social climate 35 years before it happened.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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