Lee Pace joins Glen Powell’s Running Man for the ultimate battle of the Texas hunks
The Running Man continues to stack its cast. Now, the villains to Glen Powell’s Ben Richards have started to fill out and it is perfect. At New York Comic Con, Josh Brolin announced he was playing a villain opposite Powell and now we have a second!
The cast now has Lee Pace as another villain! In an exclusive to The Hollywood Reporter, the casting was confirmed and Pace is set to play the chief hunter of the titular game show that Powell’s Ben finds himself on. Katy O’Brian (who also starred in Twisters with Powell) is set to play another contestant and Brolin is a producer of the network hosting The Running Man game show.
The premise of the Stephen King (written as Richard Bachman) novel is simple: A man named Ben Richards is desperate to get medical attention for his infant daughter. Leaving his wife and child behind, he enrolls in a network of game shows that are meant to pay out the contestants’ families no matter their fate. Some games include things like running on a treadmill if you have a breathing or heart condition.
The twisted nature of the shows leave the contestants’ fate up in the air. For Ben, he ends up on the most dangerous game of all: The Running Man. A hunter (Pace) will attempt to find, capture, and kill all of the contestants. Originally a fight for survival, the game becomes something more when Ben tries to take down the entire network.
This take on the King story was adapted by Edgar Wright and his co-writer Michael Bacall and is being directed by Wright. According to Powell’s Instagram stories, production seems to be underway on the film in England.
This cast continues to be incredible
A good King adaptation is a very special thing and there is something so incredibly fun and twisted about The Running Man but this cast is also STACKED. It was enough to get me excited to see Powell as Ben Richards but then the Wright movie just kept adding a great cast to its ranks. It gives me hope that this take on the movie will be more faithful to the novel.
The 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is known for being a classic of his films but not necessarily close to the book. This new remake gives Wright and Bacall a chance to tell a more faithful adaptation to King’s work.
Every new announcement about this movie has me excited because I do think that the cast of a King story is the most important part. We all can read King’s work but his characters are so delicate and fascinating to unpack and a great cast can really elevate the story. Which is exactly what this adaptation of The Running Man is started to feel like.
I do feel like until we get the actual casting for Sheila in the novel, I will just keep throwing my hat in the ring because I do think she is a fascinating King character. But also…I’m just so excited about this movie!
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