The Running Man Trailer Is Stephen King Through And Through
Glen Powell goes full dystopian in Edgar Wright’s new movie.
On the original cover of Stephen King’s The Running Man, the premise is explained with two simple sentences: “Welcome to America in 2025, when the best men don’t run for president. They run for their lives.” Well, we’re in America in 2025 now, and Glen Powell, arguably one of our best men, isn’t on the campaign trail. Instead, he’s in Edgar Wright’s latest movie, The Running Man, running for his life. Life imitates art.
Even though The Running Man has already been adapted into a movie once (starring someone who coincidentally later ran for office), the trailer for this new version proves it’s going back to the source and showing 2025 the way King intended it. Check out the full trailer below:
The Running Man follows Ben Richards (Powell), a young dad struggling to pay for his sick daughter’s medical treatments. Left with no other options, he joins the massively popular reality competition show The Running Man, where he can accumulate prize money by hiding out from Hunters, trained soldiers focused on tracking him down. Along the way, he encounters rebels and sparks a revolution of his own.
The story shown in the trailer is very different from the one in the 1987 movie. In that version, the year is 2017, and Ben Richards is a disgraced former soldier. He joins “The Running Man,” which is a more restrained game featuring rocket sleds and set in an abandoned part of Los Angeles. The Hunters — called “Stalkers” instead — are all gimmicky villains named things like “Subzero” and “Buzzsaw,” like they’re American Gladiators.
Josh Brolin plays devious TV producer Dan Killian in The Running Man.
Edgar Wright’s movie is far more faithful to the book, something he wanted to capture from the get-go. “One of the things about the book that I loved was the fact that Ben Richards is out in the world on his own, so it’s like the deadliest game of hide and seek,” Wright told Empire. “Ben is moving through different environments and meeting different people as he tries to survive 30 days out in the wild.”
And don’t worry about the Hunters — there are no aliases in sight. Evan McCone, the original lead hunter from the book, is now the main antagonist, played by Lee Pace. Colman Domingo plays Bobby Thompson, the show’s host, full of theatrical flair, and one of the lead rebels is played by Michael Cera, once again reunited with Wright after Scott Pilgrim.
Unlike the 1987 movie, this version of The Running Man will truly show how prescient and thrilling King’s original novel is, all in a 2025 where reality shows and stories about them are more popular than ever.
