When Edgar Wright’s The Running Man named Glen Powell (Twisters) as its star earlier this year, it seemed almost too much to hope that the movie would arrive in 2025: the same year Stephen King (writing under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) set his dystopian tale. Though Wright’s involvement in this version was announced in 2021, with the busy Powell joining so recently, it hardly seemed possible the stars would align to make that note-perfect release date. But we learned today, it will.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Pictures has set The Running Man‘s release date as November 21, 2025. The trade also revealed that Katy O’Brien (Love Lies Bleeding, The Mandalorian) has joined the cast.
When Wright first came aboard the film, it was said this project would hew closer to King’s original story than the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring adaption that hit screens in 1987. In February 2021, Deadline reported “the Baby Driver writer-director [Wright] will co-write the story with Michael Bacall, and they will be much more faithful to King’s bestselling novel. Bacall will write the script.”
In June of this year, not long after he’d joined the cast, Powell elaborated on that detail. Speaking to USA Today, he explained that he’s long been a Wright fan. “What’s been really incredible is his take on [King’s story]. It’s very much not the original Schwarzenegger flick, it’s much more grounded in the Stephen King version.”
Despite having first hit bookshelves in 1982, The Running Man still feels eerily timely; it’s about a man who reluctantly signs onto a reality show run by the government and televised to an eager audience, hoping to earn enough money to get medicine for his ailing daughter. Oh, and also not get mowed down by the assassins who are chasing after him, to the delight of all the fans watching. It’s Squid Game meets reality TV competitions—THR notes that O’Brien will play a fellow contestant—blended with fears about the rising costs of health care and callous politicians for good measure. And, it’s worth mentioning one more time, it takes place in 2025.
Paramount’s other release date updates today included the Liam Neeson-starring Naked Gun remake, which will be out August 1, 2025 (a shift of just a few weeks from its July 18, 2025 original date); Chris Miller’s as-yet untitled animated Smurfs musical starring Rihanna will snag that July 18 date instead. Also of note to genre fans: Vicious, a horror movie starring Dakota Fanning, will now arrive February 25, 2025, several months earlier than its previously announced late-summer arrival.
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