Three years after it was first announced, Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man is coming together with the casting of Hollywood’s new Best Guy, Glen Powell.
Paramount announced Powell’s casting in The Running Man at CinemaCon (via THR), where the actor was also promoting the upcoming Twister sequel, Twisters. Powell recently starred opposite Sydney Sweeney in the rom-com Anyone But You, and he’s the star of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, the upcoming Netflix film he co-wrote with the director—the guy is friggin’ everywhere. In The Running Man, Powell will take on the role played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 film.
In addition to directing, Wright is co-writing the new adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, published in 1982 under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, with Michael Bacall. The story takes place in 2025 in a dystopian U.S. where the majority of the population lives in poverty under a totalitarian government (HMM) and the only way to get money fast is by participating in government-sponsored televised competitions (HMMMMMM). Powell will play protagonist Ben Richards, an unemployed man whose desperation for cash to help his sick daughter leads him to sign up for the eponymous game show, in which contestants earn $100 for every hour they manage to avoid being killed by expert hitmen.
Last December, Wright told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that his adaptation will be more faithful to King’s book than the 1987 movie. In that version, Ben and his fellow contestants are forced into participating in the game show. King’s story, in which citizens volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way for the chance to escape poverty, even temporarily, feels more relevant.
(featured image: Jamie McCarthy, Getty Images)
