Edgar Wright’s take on The Running Man, the novel by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachmann, has been in the works since the long-ago year of 2021. But in recent months the adaptation has been moving forward with a certain swiftness, casting Glen Powell as the titular Man and later adding Daniel Ezra (A Discovery of Witches) and Katy O’Brian (The Mandalorian) to the cast.
But no reality-game-show-type story is complete without a ruthless villain or two, and now we know who will play those roles in this film: two Marvel bad guys. Thanos himself, Josh Brolin, is set to play the “ruthless producer” of the murderous game show. And Lee Pace—who once glowered frightfully as Ronan the Accuser—will play a character The Hollywood Reporter describes as “the brutal chief hunter for the network airing the game shows and tasked by the producer with tracking down Powell’s character.”
Pace has a history of morally complex characters, from the depressed, storytelling stuntman in the just-rereleased The Fall to cranky, elk-riding elf king Thranduil to… well, okay, Foundation’s clone emperor (pictured above) isn’t morally complex so much as morally bankrupt. (He did go for that soul-searching walk in the desert, at any rate.) This is an interesting choice for Pace, though, as he had a sort of similar henchman role as Ronan. Or maybe there will be more to his hunter than the plot summary suggests.
The book The Running Man takes place in a terrible dystopia (the year 2025, natch) in which people compete in a deadly reality show in order to earn money. Ben Richards, the main character, wants to save his gravely ill daughter, so while his wife turns to prostitution, he turns to running away from hunters who are dead set on killing him. A not-terribly-true-to-the-book movie adaptation was released in the ’80s and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The new version, from Shaun of the Dead director Wright, is due in theaters on November 21st, 2025.
