Paramount Pictures' and director Edgar Wright's long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King's The Running Man is finally moving forward with Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Twisters) in the lead role of Ben Richards, and the project has now added some A-list support in the form of Josh Brolin.
Deadline reports that Brolin is in final talks to play the "antagonist behind the violent reality show." However, Justin Kroll would later clarify that Brolin will not be playing the main villain, Damon Killian, but an unnamed producer on the series of the title.
Brolin played Thanos in Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga (there are rumors that he's set to return for Avengers: Secret Wars), as well as Cable in Deadpool 2. The highly in-demand actor recently passed on the offer to play Hal Jordan in the DCU Lanterns series.
Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian and Daniel Ezra are also on board in undisclosed roles, and Sydney Sweeney (Madame Web, Immaculate) has been rumored to be on the studio's radar.
Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) was first announced as director back in 2021, and updates on the project had been pretty scarce until we got word that Powell had signed on to star during CinemaCon back in April.
The sci-fi novel, which King penned under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982, was previously adapted as a 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but this new take will not be a remake, and is expected to stick much closer to the original story.
King's book is a dystopian thriller set in the United States during the year 2025, when the nation's economy is in ruins and world violence is at an all-time high. Desperate to earn enough money to save his family, protagonist Ben Richards decides to participate in a popular - and incredibly dangerous - game show called The Running Man, which allows contestants to go anywhere in the world... while being hunted down by a team of trained killers.
You can check out the trailer and synopsis for the Schwarzenegger movie below.
"In a dystopian America, the country totalitarian state where the favorite television program is The Running Man -- a game show in which prisoners must run to freedom to avoid a brutal death. Having been made a scapegoat by the government, an imprisoned Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has the opportunity to make it back to the outside again by being a contestant on the deadly show, although the twisted host, Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), has no intention of letting him escape."