Paramount’s The Running Man reboot has added another Marvel villain to its cast. Lee Pace is joining the cast of the film, which is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King — King wrote the novel under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Pace’s casting comes on the heels of the casting of another Marvel alum, Josh Brolin which was announced last week. Both former comic book villains join Karl Glusman, Katy O’Brian, Daniel Ezra, and star Glen Powell in the film which is directed by Edgar Wright. Wright also co-wrote the film with Michael Bacall. It is unclear what role Pace is playing in the film.
Pace previously appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy. The actor also most recently starred in Apple TV+’s Foundation. Foundation was renewed for a third season in December 2023. Pace’s casting means that The Running Man reboot will feature two Marvel stars — Brolin notably played Thanos, the big bad of the MCU’s “Infinity Saga”. While Pace’s role in The Running Man Reboot has not yet been revealed, Brolin is reportedly set to play the “ruthless producer” of the Running Man game show in the film.
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The Running Man is set in a dystopian world where people can enter to appear on violent game shows that the totalitarian regime uses to control and placate the masses. A man desperate for money for his sick daughter joins the popular show, The Running Man, that sees teams of killers hunting down contestants. The longer a contestant survives and evades the killers, the more money the person makes. However, the desperate man will break all the rules as he plays the game — and expose the show’s dark secrets in the process. Powell is set to play the desperate man.
The reboot of The Running Man was first announced back in 2021. At the time, it was announced that new film would be more faithful to King’s novel — a previous adaptation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was released in 1987 from filmmaker Paul Michael Glaser though that film was a loose adaptation.
“I think in this day and age as well as in terms like, you know, I think when remakes are done well is if there’s something else to add or there’s a different take on it,” Wright said previously. “So, I think the problem is sometimes recently like remakes are just kind of facsimiles of the original film and I don’t really get that excited about a lot of them because they feel like sort of karaoke versions of the originals. Obviously back in like the ‘70s and ‘80s you had ones where they were additive like Philip Kauffman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers or John Carpenter’s The Thing or David Cronenberg’s The Fly; it’s taking something and doing something interesting with it.”
He continued, “in terms of like things that I’ve been (doing), like you know, The Running Man which is something that is in active development. Why is that interesting to me? I like the film but I like the book more and they didn’t really adapt the book. Even as a teenager when I saw the Schwarzenegger film I was like, ‘Oh this isn’t like the book at all,’ and I think nobody’s adapted that book. So, when that came up, I was thinking you know and Simon Kinberg says, ‘Do you have any interest in The Running Man?’ I said, ‘You know what I’ve often thought that that book is something like crying out to be adapted.’ Now that doesn’t mean that it’s easy but like it is something that we are working on, yes, I’ll say that much.”
The Running Man will debut exclusively in theaters on November 21, 2025.