First Look at Edgar Wright’s The Running Man (2025)

Paramount Pictures has unveiled the official trailer for The Running Man (2025), the Edgar Wright-helmed adaptation of Stephen King’s cult novel of the same name. The Running Man is King’s (published here under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) go-for-broke vision of a dystopian future, which he wrote all in one week in 1982. Back then, film rights were bought by producer Dino De Laurentiis, but the 1987 movie was a way more fun action-comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Running Man is set in the year 2025 (which will also, happily, be the year of this new movie’s release). The United States, once a thriving democracy, has devolved into a totalitarian, backwards society where everyone on TV watches a deadly game show called The Running Man.

Ben Richards (the Hawkins, Indiana-based Glenn Powell in the trailer) is a young working man living in an apartment block in a public housing development named “Co-Op City.” He has a wife and a young daughter who is dying of cancer. Richards gets blacklisted and is unemployable in this future America, so he makes a desperate play to get on The Running Man, the highest-rated show in the nation. If Richards can survive 30 days, he wins $1 billion. The task of hunting him down is left to a group of professional killers called “Hunters,” who are armed and driven by all manner of gadgetry. The public will also get to watch every second of this cat-and-mouse chase unfold.

Richards’ backstory was altered in the 1987 film, but the basic set-up is the same. Contestants have 30 days to stay free, or else the Hunters are ordered to kill them. The prize is a billion dollars, but no one’s ever come close, with the current record being 197 hours. Every day of survival nets you more money, and each Hunter you kill nets you a share of the cash. If anyone can game this system, it’s Richards, who is a hardened player desperate for the chance to win.

The first film, which was received well by audiences and critics in 1987, was largely unfaithful to the book. Despite featuring a similar set-up with a brutal, government-sanctioned television show, the ’87 film played like a generic Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick from the late ’80s. That Ben Richards had muscles, a marriage, and a supportive wife was a far cry from the original character King described as “scrawny” and “pre-tubercular.” Instead of taking the satire seriously (or presenting it seriously, at least), the film played out like a low-budget Michael Bay movie.

Wright was attached to the film back in 2017, but was only able to secure the green light when Paramount Pictures confirmed the project in 2021, allowing Wright to join with his frequent collaborator Michael Bacall to write the screenplay. The new film will be much closer to King’s original vision.

The eight-minute trailer (posted below) echoes many of the key scenes from King’s novel. Ben Richards is a struggling worker, like the one described in the book, and his decision to throw his name into the lottery for The Running Man TV show is driven by his inability to pay his family’s bills and support his sick child.

Josh Brolin plays the host of the show, Dan Killian, a slick and conniving talk show host who specializes in making everything he touches a crowd-pleaser. He’s the kind of showman who would have made a more memorable villain than the one seen in the 1987 film. Brolin’s Killian gets Ben Richards to take the stage (after some heavy coercing, on Richards’ part), and once the show is live, Richards goes from a nobody to a beloved martyr.

The cast also includes Lee Pace as Evan McCone, the face of the Running Man: the government-sanctioned hunter trying to track Ben Richards down for all 30 days. Jayme Lawson is Richard’s wife Sheila, while Colman Domingo plays the game show host Bobby Thompson. Michael Cera plays rebel Bradley Throckmorton, while William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, and Daniel Ezra also star.

The cast is rounded out by a slew of musical guests, many of whom have more in common with Wright’s prior films like Baby Driver than King’s masterpieces. We’ll have to wait and see if Wright’s movie can be both grimly faithful and end on the same depressing note that King fans have come to expect from King’s direst visions of the future. Wright and Bacall may have better luck gambling on making a more traditional King’s End.

Running Man Game Schedule

Stephen King fans will have another Bachman binge to anticipate in 2025: The 1979 novel The Long Walk will also get the big-screen treatment, with a September 12 release in 2025. This means fans of King’s Bachman novels can expect a back-to-back assault in dystopian world-building and media mastery next year.

The Long Walk was a lesser-known Bachman-penned novella, which was considered a throwaway at the time of publication. But the story of a group of teenage boys forced to take part in a 100-mile, government-run march is an overlooked King classic. In the original book, if you fall behind the leader for more than a minute, you are shot and killed by armed guards on both sides of the road.

There is no official connection between the two films, but the overlapping ideas and motifs of The Running Man and The Long Walk will speak for themselves. In both, the government pits vulnerable young men against each other and a manipulative media eager to portray them as heroes.