Josh Brolin and Glen Powell Face Off in The Running Man Trailer

Paramount Pictures has officially dropped the first trailer for The Running Man (2025), a new film adaptation of Stephen King’s sci-fi thriller of the same name. Written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982, The Running Man was originally published in 1984 and has since been adapted into a 1987 action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The trailer for Wright’s new film suggests that it will be more faithful to King’s dark, satirical book.

The titular Running Man is a game show where a man or woman—called a Runner—must elude assassins, known as Hunters, as they try to live to see a new day on live television. Contestants sign up because of varying personal circumstances, are given a head start of between six and 12 hours, and then must avoid the Hunters long enough to reach some arbitrary predetermined location, at which point they win $1 billion. The stakes have been raised every year since the show began, and while the 30-day minimum win has never been achieved, the record time is currently held at 197 hours. Each day that the Runner stays alive is worth a cash payout, and a different sum is given to the show’s producers for each Hunter that is dispatched. Ben Richards is a working-class man living in the United States’ fictional “Co-Op City” with his wife and terminally ill daughter. He can’t get a job and is blacklisted, and the only way to get the life-saving medicine his daughter needs is to take the terrifyingly long odds in an underground competition. Despite his fear, Richards signs up for the show; he is, by all accounts, desperate.

The 1987 film The Running Man changed many aspects of King’s original novel. It took more cues from the science fiction action movies of the time, and it reimagined King’s protagonist Ben Richards as a much more buff and confident version of the author’s original, much more “scrawny” and “pre-tubercular” hero. While Schwarzenegger’s film is still about a game show where participants are hunted for entertainment, it is louder, more fun, and has more futuristic gizmos. The grim elements of the book were lost in translation, as was a good deal of the bleak satire and emotional undercurrent of King’s dystopian thriller.

The Running Man’s newest iteration has been in the works for some time. Edgar Wright has been attached to the project since he first expressed interest in 2017. In 2021, Paramount greenlit the project with Wright on board to direct and to write alongside Michael Bacall. Wright is no stranger to movies where the lives of main characters are on the line: his career includes films like Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, and Last Night in Soho. Wright and Bacall have both spoken at length in the past about making a movie that captured the urgency and bleakness of King’s story while also maintaining their signature fast pacing.

The newly released trailer seems to confirm that approach. Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, sporting considerably less tan and significantly more desperation than previous filmic adaptations. Josh Brolin plays Dan Killian, the larger-than-life host of the Running Man television show and self-proclaimed “dictator of America’s eyeballs.” Killian is presented as confident and brutal: when Richards turns the tables, Killian is shown ready to ruthlessly undermine the upstart runner without a second thought. But Ben Richards isn’t a desperate man looking for one last score—Ben Richards is the only thing standing between the government’s propaganda arm and its public.

The cast of The Running Man is rounded out by Lee Pace as Evan McCone, the lead Hunter in the manhunt for Richards; Jayme Lawson as Ben’s wife, Sheila; Colman Domingo as the official host of the eponymous game show, Bobby Thompson; and Michael Cera in an unexpected role as the rebel Bradley Throckmorton. Additional cast members include William H. Macy, David Zayas, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, and Daniel Ezra.

Fans of Bachman-era Stephen King will have more to look forward to than The Running Man next year: another of his dystopian runner competition novels, The Long Walk, is also being adapted as a film with a 2025 release. Slated to drop on September 12, The Long Walk is set to release just two months before The Running Man’s November 7 release date.

Given how both these stories grapple with the cruelty of the government, media, and manipulation, and the cost of survival and desperation, 2025 could be a big year for Stephen King fans. In more ways than one, it might also be a sobering one for the rest of us.