Josh Brolin is in final negotiations to play the villain role in Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man” at Paramount, the actor said in an interview at New York Comic Con on Thursday.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King and stars “Top Gun: Maverick” breakout Glen Powell.
Wright is attached to direct and co-write the story with his “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” collaborator Michael Bacall, who wrote the script. Daniel Ezra and Katy O’Brian (“Mission: Impossible 8,” “Love Lies Bleeding”) also recently joined the cast.
As TheWrap first reported, Powell will take the role filled by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 film based on King’s novel set in a dystopian future Los Angeles, where a framed police helicopter pilot is forced into a violent game show where convicts are hunted down by assassins with the promise of a pardon if they survive. O’Brian is playing one of the contestants on the show.
The film will be released on Nov. 21, 2025. According to an insider with knowledge of the project, the new movie “is a more faithful adaptation” of the novel, which King first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
Simon Kinberg, Nira Park and Wright are producing.
Brolin, an actor, producer, director and author, will next release his memoir, “From Under the Truck,” on Nov. 19. He will also star in the third installment of the “Knives Out” series, “Wake Up Dead Man.”
Additional credits include “Dune: Part Two” and Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” “Milk” (for which he received an Academy Award nomination and SAG Award nomination), the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit” and “No Country for Old Men,” Oliver Stone’s “W.,” Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario,” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice.”
Brolin is repped by CAA, Johnson, Shapiro, Slewett, Kole and Relevant.
