In yet another piece of casting news for Glen Powell’s upcoming reboot of The Running Man, the Edgar Wright directed film is set to be a reunion, as The Hollywood Reporter writes that Michael Cera joins the film’s cast alongside Emilia Jones. The film adapting Stephen King’s novel is set to film in London early next year, and is accruing quite the cast.
Cera notably starred as the title character in Wright’s adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in 2010, another page to screen title for both the director and the star, the latter of whom recently reprised his role in the animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off for Netflix. He is set to play a naive rebel who helps Powell’s leading man Ben Richards, while Jones plays a “privileged woman blind to the oppression of the government.”
The Running Man just recently added Lee Pace and Josh Brolin to its ever-growing cast list, which also features another reunion as Powell is joined by his Twisters co-star Katy O’Brian, who is also set to star in Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead. Wright is directing a script he co-wrote with Michael Bacall, which follows a desperate man who competes in a deadly reality show in order to make the money he needs to save his daughter’s life.
It’ll be interesting to see just how Wright tackles the dystopian tale, given that the last adaptation, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and was directed by Paul Michael Glaser, only loosely adapted the concept of the novel. While it kept the deadly reality show concept, Glaser’s film turned the contestants into prisoners, but with Pace and Brolin on board as villains and Cera playing a rebel, it seems like the core of the story will remain at the very least.
Originally published by King under his infamous Richard Bachman pseudonym in 1982, The Running Man has become one of his most celebrated novels, and arguably his most successful outside of his strictly horror titles. It’s one of many King films in the works, with a reboot of Salem’s Lot having just hit Max, and an adaptation of The Life of Chuck (originally published in If It Bleeds) heading our way next year.
The Running Man is set to hit theaters on November 21, 2025.
