Stephen King’s 1982 novel The Running Man, written as Richard Bachman, has now been adapted twice for theaters, but the new Blu-ray for the 1987 version arrives with a surprise that is hard to miss: the digital code inside does not unlock Paul Michael Glaser’s film at all. Instead, it redeems for Edgar Wright’s 2025 adaptation, a mismatch that turns a routine catalog release into a small but telling glitch for collectors.
Douglas Davidson’s review, published April 9, 2026, is based on a retail Blu-ray edition provided by Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment via Alliance Entertainment. The disc itself is the 1987 movie many viewers still count among Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic action titles, and it features sound and language options, but no supplemental materials. There is no commentary, no featurettes, no gag reels, no image gallery and no trailer, which leaves the package feeling lean for a release tied to the film’s 35th anniversary.
The film that lands on the disc is the one in which Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards, a military pilot who refuses to open fire on peaceful protestors, is branded by the media as the Butcher of Bakersfield after the massacre, escapes prison with the help of two freedom fighters after 18 months, and is later offered a slot on the prime-time program The Running Man in exchange for his freedom after being captured again. That plot still carries the same hard-edged dystopian charge that made it endure, even if some of the script’s specifics have not aged cleanly.
There is also a timing wrinkle in the release history. The Blu-ray appears to have first surfaced in March 2023, alongside 4K UHD editions in both standard and steelbook versions, all timed to the 35th anniversary. That means the current package is not a fresh archival effort so much as a reissue of a title already in circulation, only now with the wrong code tucked inside. For buyers who assumed the insert would match the movie on the disc, the error is the kind that is easy to overlook until the code is actually used.
That matters because the 1987 film still has an audience, and the market around it is not standing still. Wright’s 2025 version brought The Running Man back into the conversation, while the older Schwarzenegger film keeps its place as the version many longtime fans know best. If the package is being sold as a celebration of the original movie, a digital tie-in that points elsewhere is a reminder that catalog releases can be more careless than the films they carry. With 2027 marking the 40th anniversary, a cleaner, fuller edition would not be hard to justify.
For now, this Blu-ray answers the basic question plainly: the movie is intact, the extras are missing, and the code is wrong. That is enough to make the set feel less like a definitive anniversary issue than a stopgap for a title that still deserved better.