Writer/director Edgar Wright’s upcoming remake of The Running Man has been in production for a few weeks now, but just because cameras are rolling doesn’t mean that the film is done adding exceptionally talented actors to its ensemble cast. The movie already features a lineup that includes Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Katy O’Brian, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, Michael Cera and more, and now it’s being reported that Oscar-nominee Colman Domingo has signed on as well.
According to Deadline, the Rustin and Sing Sing star has come aboard the production to play a key character in The Running Man – namely the host of the titular show. It was a role memorably played by Richard Dawson in the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with Edgar Wright‘s movie set to be a more faithful adaptation of the novel by Stephen King (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), audiences can expect the part to be quite different.
In the new movie, Glen Powell is starring as Ben Richards – a destitute man living in an America that has gone full-on dystopia. In order to get medicine to care for his sick child, he volunteers to compete in one of the dangerous game shows produced by the government-sponsored television network. He ends up being a contestant on the nation’s most popular show, The Running Man, which sees him sent out into the world to be hunted as a fugitive. The longer he can stay alive, the more money goes to his family.
The 1987 movie features Richard Dawson’s Damon Killian as the principal villain of the film, but Edgar Wright’s adaptation will feature Colman Domingo’s character as a secondary antagonist. He will be the smiling face of the nefarious Network, encouraging viewers to be on the look out for Ben Richards and report sightings, but it will be Josh Brolin’s TV executive who will be the main baddie of the story.
While Domingo Colman’s career goes back to the mid-1990s, The Running Man will be his first time appearing in a Stephen King adaptation. The project is now one of three 2025 movies in which the actor will appear, as he is playing Joe Jackson in the Michael Jackson biopic Michael and is in Anthony and Joe Russo’s upcoming Netflix blockbuster The Electric State.
The Running Man is one of as many as six Stephen King adaptations arriving this year, and it is now only months away from hitting theaters, as Paramount Pictures has dated the thriller for November 7. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest updates about the film, and for a weekly roundup of the biggest events going on in the world of Stephen King, check out my Thursday column The King Beat.
