After all these years it is finally happening. The remake of The Running Man is now locked in with a firm release date. Edgar Wright’s adaption of the Stephen King novel (written as Richard Bachman) will land on November 21st 2025. It’s just over one year away.
Not only that, but it has cast Glenn Powell’s co-star. Love Lies Bleeding actress Katy O’Brian will be the female lead according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.
As any discerning Outposter knows, the book is wildly different to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger-led film that was all 80s gameshow glamor, riffing on The Price Is Right meets the Colosseum of ancient Rome.
The book, like the movie, was set in a future America (2025 in the book) under a totalitarian regime that uses violent game shows to distract the disenfranchised masses. Feels kind of prescient.
The book features Richards, a desperate man who needs money for medical treatment for his sick daughter. He decides to join the most popular show – The Running Man – in which teams of killers hunt down contestants. The longer one survives, the more money that person makes.
Unlike the movie, this hunt takes place across the whole country out in the open and the hunters aren’t wrestling inspired. Instead, they are ex-FBI and CIA trackers. The producers underestimate the drive and resourcefulness of a desperate father, and the longer Richards survives, the closer he comes to discovering the dark secrets about the show that the producers have been hiding from the world.
Powell will play Richards, while O’Brian is likely to be a fellow contestant. She may be the new version of the Maria Conchita Alonso character from the original.
This is a passion project for Wright, who has been attached since 2021. He is a big fan of 80s action, as we know from Hot Fuzz, so he may find a way to straddle the worlds between the 1987 movie and the original novel.