{"id":11818,"date":"2025-11-15T23:13:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T15:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11818"},"modified":"2025-11-15T23:13:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T15:13:33","slug":"why-isnt-pennywise-in-the-running-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11818","title":{"rendered":"Why Isn\u2019t Pennywise in The Running Man?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets-prd.ignimgs.com\/2024\/05\/31\/it-prequel-bill-skarsgard-cast-1717147718646.jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><strong>This article contains spoilers for <\/strong><strong>The Running Man<\/strong><strong> (2025).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">There are a number of burning questions lingering at the end of Edgar Wright\u2019s adaptation of Stephen King\/Richard Bachman\u2019s The Running Man. How effective is the revolution fomented by Ben Richards (Glen Powell)? What happened to Amelia Williams (Emilia Jones) after she jumped out of a plane? But the one question that burns brighter than a boarding house lit up by accidentally ignited adult magazines is: Why isn\u2019t Pennywise the Dancing Clown in The Running Man?<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Okay, this probably requires <em>some<\/em> explanation, so let\u2019s take a step back. This newest iteration of The Running Man takes place in the near-distant future as we follow Richards on the run as part of the titular game show. He needs to stay alive for 30 days while the world reports on him and elite Hunters, including the masked McCone (Lee Pace), track him down. Over the course of the two-hour-plus movie, Richards stays on the move throughout the East Coast, traveling from what is likely New York City (though not specified) to Boston to \u2013 and this is where Pennywise comes into play \u2013 Derry, Maine.<\/p>\n<section class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\">\n<aside class=\"card jsx-1339469126 jsx-1178573261 box jsx-2627838217\" data-cy=\"aside\">\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\"><strong>More: <\/strong><strong>The Running Man Review<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/section>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">That last town is a classic fictional location from multiple King stories and novels, with the first reference appearing in his 1981 short story, \u201cThe Bird and the Album.\u201d Following further references in The Running Man \u2013 published under the Bachman pen name on May 4, 1982 \u2013 and Different Seasons\u2019 \u201cThe Body\u201d (later the basis for Stand by Me) that same year, it then turned up in Pet Sematary in 1983, and two other short stories. \u201cUncle Otto\u2019s Truck\u201d (also 1983) and 1984\u2019s \u201cMrs. Todd\u2019s Shortcut\u201d were later collected in the 1985 anthology, Skeleton Crew.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">While King set more stories in the town of Castle Rock, and only three books were set mostly in Derry proper (including 11\/22\/63 and Insomnia), there is of course one novel that is most associated with the town: 1986\u2019s It. You\u2019re probably familiar with the bones of that one thanks to the resurgent popularity of the novel tied to the HBO prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry, but the short version is that there\u2019s an evil clown named Pennywise who lives in the sewers and eats children. He\u2019s also a supernatural alien\/avatar of chaos who is nearly immortal until a bunch of kids known as the Losers Club yell at him until he dies.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Midway through the new 2025 film adaptation of The Running Man, Richards is sent to what\u2019s supposed to be a safehouse thanks to Bradley Throckmorton (Daniel Ezra), a rebel against the Games Network that controls every aspect of American life and produces The Running Man game show. Richards flips over a card handed to him by Throckmorton to show the address he\u2019s headed to, and if you\u2019ve seen the movie, you likely heard a laugh of recognition from the audience when it\u2019s revealed that he\u2019s heading to Derry.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 data-cy=\"title2\" class=\"title2 jsx-1903782357 jsx-3735650234\">Welcome to\u2026 Well, You Know<\/h2>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Once Richards gets there, he does <em>not<\/em> encounter Pennywise at any point, nor does he head into a sewer or visit the house on Neibolt Street that offers access to Pennywise\u2019s domain. There are no red balloons or other noticeable references to It; nobody floats down here in The Running Man, because they\u2019re too busy running. Instead, Richards heads to the house of Elton Parrakis (Michael Cera), an inventor who publishes zines trying to take down the system, and who has a very complicated relationship with hot dogs.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Even though there is no real connection to the events of It in the movie\u2019s Derry sequence, it\u2019s difficult to get It out of your mind. Parrakis lives with his insane mother, Victoria (Sandra Dickinson), who has been damaged by past events in Derry thanks to her husband \u2013 Elton\u2019s dad \u2013 being beaten up and killed thanks to his rebel hot dog cart (there\u2019s more to it, but that\u2019s the broad strokes). She\u2019s very reminiscent of the also-damaged Pennywise-infected adults from It, in particular the sweaty, creepy Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson) from It Chapter Two.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">To be clear, Victoria is definitely <em>not<\/em> Pennywise; she\u2019s just a crazy old lady. But when Richards and Parrakis are attacked by the police, the sequence ends with them sliding down a firepole to an area below Parrakis\u2019s house. It\u2019s hard at that point not to think, \u201cUnderground in Derry? That\u2019s where Pennywise lives!\u201d Sure, it\u2019s a secret tunnel and not a sewer, but wouldn\u2019t it have been great if Pennywise popped his terrifying head into the action? And you know who loves secret tunnels? Pennywise the Dancing Clown!<\/p>\n<h2 data-cy=\"title2\" class=\"title2 jsx-1903782357 jsx-3735650234\">Not Clowning Around<\/h2>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">There are several good reasons Pennywise is <em>not<\/em> in The Running Man. The simplest, most straightforward, and easily the most boring reason is that the two movies, despite both being based on Stephen King novels, are from two different companies; It, its sequel, and the currently running prequel miniseries are all produced by Warner Bros. Discovery, and The Running Man is produced by Paramount. While that wouldn\u2019t necessarily preclude including a reference to It in The Running Man, having actor Bill Sk\u00e5rsgard show up in full clown gear would likely be a no-go. Sure, these kinds of character trades have happened between companies before \u2013 see the complicated rights between Sony and Disney re: Spider-Man for more on that \u2013 but figuring out contracts so a clown can briefly appear in an otherwise unrelated movie just doesn\u2019t make a lot of business sense.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Okay, that was no fun, so let\u2019s pivot to some less dry explanations. One of them? The Running Man takes place in the future. While the new movie doesn\u2019t specify the time period, the original Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, which strays vastly from the book, is set in 2017. More to the point, the King\/Bachman book is set in the unimaginable future year of 2025. Regardless of how the Wright\/Powell movie squares with this, The Running Man is set beyond any known timeline for It, either in the movies or the book; that book is set in 1957-1958 and later in 1984-1985, while the recent movies are set in 1988-1989 and 2016.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Why specify this? Well \u2013 spoilers for the end of It \u2013 the Losers Club (aka the kids who were plagued by Pennywise) destroy the clown for good as adults. Even if for some insane reason the new Running Man is set in 2017 and links up with the timeline of the new movies, Pennywise was still defeated a year earlier. But given the more likely possibility that The Running Man is set sometime in \u201cour\u201d future, it\u2019s been years if not decades since the Losers Club purged Derry of Pennywise\u2019s influence. He can\u2019t show up\u2026 because he\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Another very good reason Pennywise isn\u2019t there is because while many of King\u2019s books contain references to each other, canonically they\u2019re all part of a King multiverse but <em>not<\/em> the same direct continuity. It\u2019s likely that King was planting some fun easter eggs for fans throughout his writing, but didn\u2019t start to tie them all together until his landmark fantasy series, The Dark Tower. The simple version presented there is that at the center of the multiverse is the titular Tower, and everything grows out of it like spokes of a wheel. So, for example, the events of It may have canonically happened in both Dreamcatcher and The Mist, but the events of Dreamcatcher did <em>not<\/em> happen in the world of The Mist and vice versa. There\u2019s even a spoke of the King multiverse where King exists as a writer, which raises a whole host of other questions. Then there are King novels and stories that just exist as is, unconnected from anything else.<\/p>\n<h2 data-cy=\"title2\" class=\"title2 jsx-1903782357 jsx-3735650234\">Different Spokes for Different Folks<\/h2>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Confusing, right? You really don\u2019t need to worry about it unless you\u2019re a hardcore King head, and even then, it\u2019s not really important to the enjoyment of his novels. Given that King wrote The Running Man under his Bachman pen name years before he released It, there\u2019s no reason to think the version of Derry that Richards visits and the version where Pennywise eats a little kid named Georgie are on the same spokes of the wheel anyway. It certainly could be that they <em>are<\/em>, but King has never specified whether the Bachman books \u2013 which also include Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), Thinner (1984), The Regulators (1996), and Blaze (2007) \u2013 are connected to his other work in any way other than that Derry mention and him existing as a writer in Thinner (remember, he wrote that as Bachman, so it sort of makes sense in that case).<\/p>\n<p><output class=\"box-wrapper jsx-2673806401\" data-cy=\"article-video\"\/><\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">But the real reason Pennywise isn\u2019t in The Running Man? It\u2019s because that would have been too hilarious, too awesome \u2013 perhaps the funniest thing ever committed to screen. Edgar Wright didn\u2019t put Pennywise the Dancing Clown in The Running Man because, to not mince words, he\u2019s a coward. A braver man would have had Pennywise pop up in that tunnel below Parrakis\u2019 house and chase Glen Powell for the rest of the movie or at least to the Derry border before he gave up and went looking for some kids to snack on. <\/p>\n<div class=\"display-title jsx-959792410 jsx-2659527929 quote-container\" data-cy=\"quoteBox\">&#8230;Because that would have been too hilarious, too awesome\u00a0\u2013\u00a0perhaps the funniest thing ever committed to screen. <\/div>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Or how about this? Have Pennywise as one of the contestants on The Running Man! The whole purpose of the game show is ostensibly to punish criminals, and Pennywise is a millennia-old child murderer. He\u2019s a <em>perfect<\/em> contestant for Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the show\u2019s producer, to recruit. If you subbed Pennywise in for Ben Richards, though, the former would win The Running Man easily. While the movie tries to tell us that Richards is a master of disguise thanks to (poorly) gluing on a mustache, or pretending to be a blind priest, Pennywise can look like anyone or anything at any time. Unlike Powell, who just can\u2019t hide his chiseled, pleasantly stubbled chin, Pennywise can look like a small child, or one of the Hunters, or even a giant clown-spider; the latter would probably draw too much attention, but he <em>could<\/em> do that if he wanted to. Heck, he could make himself into a mailbox so he could mail the daily video tapes that cause Richards so many problems throughout the movie.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">Even beyond the whole disguise thing, nobody knows the sewers of Derry better than Pennywise. While McCone and his Hunters stumble around in the dark, Pennywise would always be two steps ahead of them, easily evading capture and winning the billion dollar prize at the end of 30 days. What would Pennywise, an ancient entity from a race known as Deadlights, <em>do<\/em> with that much money? That\u2019s unclear, but it sure would be fun to watch.<\/p>\n<p data-cy=\"paragraph\" class=\"paragraph jsx-2269604527\">You hear us, Paramount? Make that deal with WBD. The people want \u2013 nay, they <em>demand<\/em> \u2013 Pennywise to appear in a sequel, and I\u2019ll see you in the theater in a few years when The Running Man 2: The Floating Man, Part 1 \u2013 Welcome (Back) To Derry comes out!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/why-isnt-pennywise-in-the-running-man\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article contains spoilers for The Running Man (2025). There are a number of burning questions lingering at the end of Edgar Wright\u2019s adaptation of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[605,140,9584,2214],"class_list":["post-11818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-isnt","tag-man","tag-pennywise","tag-running","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}