Glen Powell Is Racing to Win a Killer TV Competition in the First Trailer for Edgar Wright's 'The Running Man'
Stephen King's 1982 novel is heading back to the big screen after 1987's Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring film.
Feeling the need for speed, posing as an assassin, faking a romance, battling tornadoes: thanks to Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man, Anyone But You and Twisters, they've been Glen Powell's recent tasks. The actor's next job is to flee, and also to survive, in the second big-screen adaptation of a dystopian novel written by one of the most-famous authors there is under a pen name. His The Running Man gig under director Edgar Wright (Last Night in Soho) also involves following in Arnold Schwarzenegger's (Fubar) footsteps.
2025 is the perfect year for another take on the thrilling page-turner that Stephen King released in 1982, but as his pseudonym Richard Bachman. This is the year, in fact, that The Running Man is set on the page — and when King imagined that healthcare in the United States would favour the wealthy, leaving everyone else in such a scramble for medical treatment that signing up to compete in a literally killer television show is the only option.
As the just-dropped first trailer for The Running Man shows, Powell's Ben Richards is the man in a bind in a near-future society. He's 35, married, has one child and is facing a medical crisis, needing a doctor for his sick daughter. He's also both unemployed and blacklisted from working. Josh Brolin (Outer Range) plays TV producer Dan Killian, who convinces Ben that entering the hit small-screen series that shares the film name could solve all of his problems.
The aim, then, is for the lethal game's newest contestant to make it through 30 days while professional assassins are trying to hunting him down — and as the world watches on to huge ratings success. When Schwarzenegger portrayed Richards in 1987, the film didn't stick as closely to King's storyline.
Back behind the lens for the first time since 2021's trio of films — Last Night in Soho, Sparks documentary The Sparks Brothers and concert film What the Hell Is It This Time? Sparks Live in London — Wright has also enlisted Michael Cera (The Phoenician Scheme) to lend Powell's protagonist a hand, plus Colman Domingo (The Four Seasons) as the host of The Running Man. His cast spans everyone from Lee Pace (Foundation) and Jayme Lawson (Sinners) to Emilia Jones (Winner), William H Macy (Accused) and Daniel Ezra (All American), too.
The film hits cinemas Down Under on Thursday, November 6, 2025 — and its debut trailer has also dropped with ideal timing, given that watching competitors attempt to survive a deadly game was at the heart of Squid Game, which just wrapped up its third and final season, and also clearly owes King's novel a debt.
Check out the first trailer for The Running Man below:
The Running Man opens in cinemas Down Under on Thursday, November 6, 2025.