For a few years, Stephen King was Stephen King, and Richard Bachman was Richard Bachman. The former was known for novels like Carrie, The Stand, The Shining, and Salem’s Lot, while the latter wrote (arguably) even darker novels like Rage and Roadwork (both of them are yet to receive any kind of movie or TV adaptation). Eventually, though, it was revealed that these two authors were one and the same, and King had used the Richard Bachman name as a pseudonym to write stories that were generally more cynical than his other works, and with maybe less of a horror focus. But emphasis on the “maybe,” because quite a few Bachman books are horror-related, and scary in some ways that are comparable to the more frightening Stephen King books. Anyway, the truth about Richard Bachman was exposed in the mid-1980s, and some aspects of the whole ordeal inspired The Dark Half, which was published near the end of that same decade, and yet a couple more Richard Bachman books were still published post-outing, including The Regulators and Blaze.

There are so many movies based on Stephen King books, but those based on the Richard Bachman ones are a fair bit rarer. Of the seven Bachman books, three have adaptations, with one having two (quite different) adaptations. There will be four by the end of 2025, but as of September, there are three. Rage probably won’t ever get an adaptation, Roadwork could work, The Regulators… eh, that one’s weird, so good luck to anyone who wants to try. And Blaze… Blaze might not be terrible, if made into a movie, but it’s lesser King/Bachman, so it might only be decent at best. As for the adaptations that are out there, and do exist, they’re ranked below, even if there aren’t a ton of them. One of these is a misfire, one is a fun (but fairly disconnected from the source material) adaptation, and the other is super recent, but also super compelling. At least two of these are very much worth watching, and maybe that third one is, too, if you’re a Stephen King/Richard Bachman fanatic.

Also, some might wonder why Richard Bachman has made a comeback as of 2025, and there are non-cynical reasons, but one could just be money. Stephen King movies have done well, and most of them have been adapted. Before 2025, there were only two Richard Bachman adaptations, and one of them was a very loose adaptation. So it could just be Hollywood digging deeper into the Stephen King well than ever before, and turning up some Bachmans… but hey, if the movies are good, then that’s the main thing. Money is a motivator, but art made either wholly or in part for financial reasons can still obviously be good.

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‘Thinner’ (1996)

Image via Paramount

So, to be a little positive at first, Thinner is a fairly accurate adaptation of the Richard Bachman novel of the same name, given a pretty ordinary book ended up being a rather mediocre horror movie. Many conversations around this one involve the notion that it hasn’t aged well, but even leaving that aside, a problem here is that Thinner just isn’t particularly scary, regardless of whether you think it’s a story that should’ve been told. It’s about a man who gets a curse put on him by an elderly Romani man, and he finds himself gradually losing weight, getting, you know, thinner and thinner. He had been struggling with his weight, in some respects, meaning the curse feels like it could be a benefit for a while, but then it approaches more dangerous territory, and that’s when the body horror elements fittingly come in.

It’s a movie that asks, “What would happen if someone just couldn’t stop losing weight?”, but then also, that’s like the whole story. It’s repetitive and a bit tedious as a book, and maybe slightly less so as a movie that only runs for 90-ish minutes, but the premise is still too slight either way (it’s tempting, but too easy, to call the story itself thin). There is some mild discomfort from the whole thing, intentional as well as perhaps unintentional if you’re on “Team Thinner Has Aged Poorly,” and from a technical/make-up perspective, there is something neat about having one actor play a character who looks different, because of weight loss, in almost every new scene. But there’s just not much here, it’s not scary enough, and both book and movie are only really recommendable if you’re a Stephen King completionist. King himself, though, ended up writing another story about losing weight rapidly, through seemingly supernatural means, but with less of a horror slant. The resulting novel was Elevation, notable for being more of a novella than a novel (calling it the latter is being generous), and for being set in the recurring fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, which is also the setting of other King stories like Cujo and Needful Things. Elevation is slightly better, and maybe more interesting, but it’s also kind of a mess. Good on King for trying again with a story about dramatic/alarming weight loss, but you know what they say about three strikes (he probably shouldn’t approach such territory again).

2

‘The Running Man’ (1987)

Some people might question 1987’s The Running Man being counted here, as either a Richard Bachman story or a Stephen King one, since this film is narratively quite far removed from the source material. This takes the same broad premise of the 1982 novel of the same name and makes it more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie than a gritty thriller with a dystopian setting. Well, The Running Man (1987) is still dystopian, and it retains a pretty high level of violence throughout, but it’s also more extravagant and, action, action-focused. The Running Man novel was more of a thriller than a story that focused on action, with one man going on the run as part of a televised event, the survival of which will lead to him getting a sizable amount of money. In the movie, the violent things are still televised as entertainment, but it’s done more as a game show with a series of brutal games that all involve survival.

It’s not a faithful adaptation by any means, because there are too many differences beyond the premises being somewhat comparable and the protagonist being called Ben Richards in both, but The Running Man (1987) is still decent entertainment, so it doesn’t fail as a movie necessarily. When judged as its own thing, it’s certainly not perfect by any means, as there are both better and worse movies from the 1980s starring Schwarzenegger, but there’s enough here as far as action and broad satire are concerned to make it a solid watch. It’s also technically the first movie based on a Richard Bachman book, so that also counts for something. 2025 is seeing not a remake coming out, but a new adaptation that intends to be more faithful to the source material, with Edgar Wright (known for his stylish and usually fast-paced movies) being the director.

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‘The Long Walk’ (2025)

Image via Lionsgate

If you look at Stephen King’s bibliography, and include all the Richard Bachman books, then only five in total were published before The Long Walk. So that makes it kind of surprising that it took so long to finally get a movie adaptation, particularly when you consider how the likes of Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and The Shining all received movie or TV adaptations within a handful of years in each instance. But also, The Long Walk is quite one-note and, if adapted poorly, would make for a repetitive and dull movie, seeing as it’s focused on a deadly endurance competition which involves a bunch of young men walking, and the last to stop is declared the winner. The stakes are raised because anyone who drops out (in other words, doesn’t win) is executed on the spot, meaning 99 young men are fated to die in the competition in the book, and in the movie, the number’s a still ghastly 49, since the number of participants are reduced for practical purposes, it seems. Reading the book is nauseating and emotionally exhausting, and the movie packs a similar punch, standing as one of the more distressing Stephen King adaptations out there (so far).

The psychological toll of reading the book and imagining how the participants would be feeling is captured well on screen, and The Long Walk (2025) thankfully doesn’t pull many punches when it comes to depicting some of the book’s more alarming and violent sequences. You have to buy the brutality and bleakness of the dystopian world, and toning down everything in the book for the movie would’ve gone against the whole thing, and probably felt wrong. As such, The Long Walk is both one of King’s scariest books, and it’s now also one of the scariest (or at least most intense) movies based on one of his books. It’s quite comfortably the best of the Bachman adaptations to date, and though it’s a hard watch to the extent that it’s hard to recommend to everyone, The Long Walk (2025) is undeniably impressive and largely faithful to the book it’s based on.

The Long Walk

Release Date

September 12, 2025

Runtime

108 Minutes

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  Cooper Hoffman

  Raymond Garraty / #47

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  David Jonsson

  Peter McVries / #23