Glen Powell
Brian Bowen Smith
Glen Powell, Hollywood’s favorite rising star, has nabbed his first action vehicle.
The actor, who cemented leading man status with the hit romantic comedy Anyone But You, will star in Paramount’s The Running Man, a new adaptation of the Stephen King novel that Edgar Wright will direct.
Wright, whose been attached the project since 2021, is also producing along with partner Nira Parkl and genre mainstay Simon Kinberg.
King’s Running Man, published in 1982 and written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, was set in 2025 in an America under a totalitarian regime that uses violent game shows to placate the disenfranchised masses. One desperate man, needing money for his sick daughter, joins the most popular show, The Running Man, in which teams of killers hunt down contestants. The longer one survives, the more money that person makes. But as the game show’s producers and killers will find out, this desperate man will break all the rules and expose the show’s dark secrets.
The story was previously adapted in 1987 as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and directed by Paul Michael Glaser of Starsky and Hutch fame.
Wright co-wrote the new script with Michael Bacall.
Paramount already had a strong relationship with Powell thanks to his breakout turn as cool and cocky pilot Hangman in the almost $1.5 billion-grossing Top Gun: Maverick.
And the studio gets Powell as his star power is at a flexing point. The actor is coming off of Anyone But You, the surprise hit from Sony Pictures that earned $218.7 million worldwide and made Hollywood see Powell’s viability as an actor that can be a face of a movie.
Powell has a big summer movie coming out with Universal’s Twisters, in which he stars alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and David Corenswet, with the actor already stealing scenes in the trailer as a cocky tornado hunter.
Before that, Powell will be seen in action-comedy Hitman, directed by Richard Linklater, which the star also co-wrote, and co-produced. The film, which is already garnering critical acclaim from its festival circuit appearances, will premiere in theaters on May 24, and will then be released on Netflix on June 7, 2024.
Powell is repped by CAA and The Initiative Group, and Johnson, Shapiro.
