The future isn’t sleek or utopian; it’s loud, televised, and brought to you by your favorite corporate sponsors. In Edgar Wright’s high-voltage new film, “The Running Man,” entertainment has literally become a blood sport. Based on Stephen King’s 1982 novel, this isn’t your father’s dystopia; it’s a world where survival ratings matter more than life itself, and one wrong move can make you viral in all the wrong ways. Glenn Powell stars as Ben Richards, a man framed, hunted, and transformed into TV’s latest disposable hero.
It’s a punchy, adrenaline-fueled reinvention from a filmmaker who loves turning chaos into choreography. Wright trades the candy-coated energy of “Baby Driver” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” for something grittier and sweatier, a survival thriller that feels uncomfortably close to our algorithmic present. It’s wickedly funny, politically sharp, and unmistakably his, even as it veers into darker, nastier terrain.