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 his or her 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 Sept. 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.
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:
“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.”
“…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 stool-pigeon 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!
