William H. Macy has joined the ever-growing cast of The Running Man, Paramount’s adaptation of the Stephen King story from director Edgar Wright.
Glen Powell tops the call sheet that also includes names such as Josh Brolin, Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding), Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy), Michael Cera and CODA star Emilia Jones.
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.
The novel centered on a desperate man named Ben Richards, needing money for his sick daughter, who joins the most popular show, The Running Man, in which teams of killers hunt down contestants. The longer a contestant 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. Powell is playing Richards in this take.
Macy will play a man who assists Richards when he’s on the run.
Brolin, meanwhile, stars as the ruthless producer of the game show, O’Brian is one of the contestants on the show, and Pace is the brutal chief hunter tracking down Powell’s character. Cera will play a naïve rebel who tries to help the desperate man, while Jones is playing a privileged woman blind to the oppression of the government.
The feature is due to start shooting next week in London, with Paramount releasing the film on Nov. 21, 2025. Simon Kinberg, Nira Park and Wright are producing.
Macy is the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning veteran actor whose credits range from Paul Thomas Anderson dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia to the Coen Brothers’ Fargo and Disney comedy Wild Hogs to the long-running Showtime series Shameless.
He most recently appeared in this summer’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Amazon Prime’s comedy Ricky Stanicky, with Zac Efron and John Cena.
He is repped by IAG and Atlas Artists.