Steven E. de Souza has joked the next Running Man remake might finally "stick the landing".

The 78-year-old filmmaker - who wrote the original 1987 movie based on Stephen King's dystopian novel of the same name - has opened up on the challenge that he and director Edgar Wright have faced with their own respective adaptations.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "The book's ending is a downer, so you need a new ending. "I would say that both the '87 version and this version tweak the ending in pretty much the same way, except that in our version, we had less money, so it's a little simpler.

"Maybe the third version in 2045 will stick the landing."

The original starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Glen Powell taking the lead in the new movie.

De Souza was given an additional literary material credit on Wright's new take, and while he's read the script, he hasn't seen the complete film yet.

He said: "I read it and [felt that] on paper, they got the ending working. Even the reviews that love it say it stumbles at the end.

"It seems to me that this time around, something went wrong between the page and the stage again."

The Die Hard filmmaker - who insisted he "would never be upset" by seeing a filmmaker rebooting one of his older projects - is glad that people have been sharing their favourite moments from both versions.

He added: "I was totally rooting for it because I figured the more people see this movie, [then they] will want to go out and rent the old one, just for comparison's sakes. So, win-win."

Wright recently insisted the new film is closer to King's original book than the 1987 version, but he hopes fans of the first movie will enjoy his new take.

He recently told the same outlet: "It does have a passionate cult following that I'm very aware of, and I would hope that the people who love the 1987 film would love this.

"But I don't think that factored into it as much as me knowing that there was a different movie in [the source material].

"The best remakes of films or the best new adaptations are where you're doing something radically different with it ...

"When there are remakes that feel like a shot-for-shot remake, I wonder: 'Why even bother if you're just doing the same beats as the other film?'

"So those movies don't really interest me, and they feel a bit like karaoke.

"But this felt like a fresh movie because the source material hadn't been fully adapted, and most of the characters in the book are not in the 1987 film."