Though some set photos have given us a glimpse of Glen Powell as Ben Richards, we are still waiting on a first official still and teaser for Edgar Wright's new take on Stephen King's The Running Man. However, we do have a first behind-the-scenes photo courtesy of Empire.
The shot features Wright directing the action, with some extras in costume visible in the background.
“One of the things about the book that I loved was the fact that Ben Richards is out in the world on his own, so it’s like the deadliest game of hide and seek,” Wright tells the mag. “It does feel like making a road movie in a lot of ways: a very intense, dangerous road movie. Ben is moving through different environments and meeting different people as he tries to survive 30 days out in the wild.”
Josh Brolin will also star as a villainous producer, along with Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian and Daniel Ezra in undisclosed roles.
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."