Glen Powell to Lead Edgar Wright’s ‘The Running Man’ Adaptation

Glen Powell, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men, has just landed the starring role in The Running Man. Edgar Wright will direct, write, and produce the long-gestating film of the Stephen King novel. Deadline reports that Powell will play Ben Richards, a man who enters a deadly dystopian game show to win enough money to save his dying daughter. The role was previously played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a loose 1987 adaptation of the book.

It has been a steady climb for Powell. Starting out with small roles in The Dark Knight Rises, The Expendables 3, and Sex Ed, he landed a lead role on the first season of the teen horror series Scream Queens. He followed that up with showier roles in Everybody Wants Some!, Hidden Figures (as astronaut John Glenn), and Set It Up. His role as cavalier pilot Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick made him a star, and he has since gone on to star in the sleeper hit rom-com Anyone But You and the Korean War film Devotion. He is next set to star in the Richard Linklater crime film Hit Man and this summer’s disaster flick Twisters.

What is ‘The Running Man’?

Originally published in 1982 under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, The Running Man takes place in the crumbling America of the then-distant year 2025. Ben Richards’ daughter is dying, and his wife is turning to prostitution, so he signs up for The Running Man, a game show in which he must evade a squad of assassins known as the Stalkers; the longer he stays alive, the more money he makes. The book was very loosely adapted into a 1987 film starring Schwarzenegger as Richards, a pilot framed for war crimes in a dystopian America. The film did not take much from the book apart from the concept of a deadly game show, as Richards contended with The Running Man’s evil host Damon Killian (played with oily glee by real-life game show host Richard Dawson) and supervillainous stalkers like the hockey-themed Professor Sub-Zero and the electrified opera singer Dynamo. While it doesn’t take much from King’s book, it does provide Schwarzenegger with some choice one-liners; when asked about the fate of a villain he just killed with his own chainsaw, Richards answers « He had to split ».

The Running Man is one of a number of King adaptations currently in the works. The much-delayed Salem’s Lot remake is finally coming to Max, while Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck is set to be released on Netflix later this year.

The Running Man is in pre-production; no release date has yet been set. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.