When Tom Cruise turned up at the London premiere of Glen Powell’s Twisters earlier this year, it felt like a baton-passing moment. With The Running Man, the peaceful transfer of power to Hollywood’s ascendant star continues. This time, it’s out with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who led Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 version of Stephen King’s dystopian novel, and in with Powell, who will star in the upcoming reboot. The 35-year-old actor has proven he can play a hot-headed Navy pilot whose smize is hotter than a jet engine, a professorial nerd turned chameleonic faux-assassin, and a tornado-rustling redneck who could reduce you to a pool on the floor no matter how badly he stinks. So his next challenge feels right: elaborately murdering bad guys with pithy one-liners. (Hey Killian! Here is Sub Zero! Now … Plain Zero!)
According to The Wrap, the new adaptation was recently green lit and the cameras will start rolling in November. And Powell has a helluva squadron leader this time around: Edgar Wright, the maximalist filmmaker behind Hot Fuzz, Last Night in Soho and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, is attached to direct, with his Scott Pilgrim co-writer Michael Bacall providing the script.
Here’s everything else we know about The Running Man.
What happens in the book?
It’s 2025. America is a dystopian, divided hellscape enslaved by reality TV. But enough about real life! One such game show, the titular Running Man, pits contestants against hordes of hit men for a cash prize. Think Squid Game by way of Fortnite, with cameras watching it all Big Brother style. The novel concerns anguished protagonist Ben Richards, who participates in the grisly game to raise enough money to pay for his sickly daughter’s healthcare. (We swear this seemed way more fictional back in the ’80s.)
The Arnie version—part of a career-defining run for Schwarzenegger, released the same year as Predator and hot on the heels of Conan, The Terminator, Commando, and Predator–was less concerned with “story” and “plot” than it was in being a delivery system for Schwarzenegger ass-kicking and cheesy, fist-pumping one-liners. As such, it deviated from the book in a number of ways: it was set in 2017, for one, and did not feature Richards’ ailing daughter. The Wrap reports that the Glen Powell Running Man will be “a more faithful adaptation,” though whether or not they’ll still set it in 2025 will presumably depend on the outcome of the U.S. election.
When will it be out?
No word on this yet, but with production set to start in November this year, don’t expect to see The Running Man until the end of 2025, when we’ll run to— okay, sorry, no more puns.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
