The Running Man Is Sprinting to Paramount+: When You Can Stream Glen Powell’s New Thriller

Spoiler alert: This rundown digs into major plot details and the ending of Edgar Wright's The Running Man. If you want to go in fresh, bail now.

Edgar Wright finally took his shot at Stephen King's game-of-death classic, and the result hit U.S. theaters on November 14, 2025. Glen Powell leads a stacked cast in a slick, pissed-off dystopian thriller that swaps subtlety for momentum. If you are curious about when it will stream, how the show-within-the-movie actually works, and whether that ending tees up a sequel, I have you covered.

The basics

The Running Man is adapted from King's 1982 novel and centers on Ben Richards, a broke, stubbornly decent guy from Co-Op City who signs up for a lethal reality show to pay for his infant daughter Cathy's medicine. The show's puppet master is executive producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Hosting duties go to Bobby Thompson (Colman Domingo). The hunters are led by Evan McCone. The rest of the ensemble packs familiar faces: Lee Pace, Michael Cera, and Emilia Jones among them. Wright directs, and the early scorecard looks middling-to-positive: Rotten Tomatoes at 64% and IMDb at 6.8/10.

How the nightmare game works

Near-future America has turned stratified and mean, and the top-rated TV program is a bloodsport. Contestants are called Runners. Survive 30 days while professional assassins try to erase you, and you snag a life-changing prize. Killian dangles a truly obscene carrot in front of Ben: a billion dollars.

Rules-wise, Runners get a 12-hour head start, a little cash, and a daily chore: send in video recordings. Those tapes are the show’s lifeblood, because the network airing it — called FreeVee in the film — edits the footage to paint Ben as an unhinged murderer. Thompson, the host, ladles that spin across the broadcast to whip up the crowd and keep ratings spiking. On the ground, Ben scrambles through Boston’s sewers after an early firefight, trying to stay a step ahead of McCone’s hunters and an entire country trained to see him as the villain.

Who is actually pulling the strings

Ben finds out the show's deck is stacked thanks to Bradley Throckmorton, a young underground activist who essentially jailbreaks the narrative and shows him how the sausage gets made. Along the way, Ben grabs leverage by taking Amelia Williams hostage. She sticks around long enough to realize the glossy TV version of events is a lie.

The endgame (yes, this is the spoiler part)

The finale heads to an airfield. Ben bluffs that he has explosives to secure a jet out of there. Killian, ever the showman, tries to break him by rolling "evidence" that Ben’s family has been murdered — a move designed to push him over the edge on live TV. That footage is fabricated. After the dust settles, Bradley leaks a black box recording that exposes what really happened, torching the show's official story.

So when can you watch at home?

Paramount has not locked in digital or streaming dates yet. But there is a pattern with recent studio releases, and it points to a pretty standard rollout here. Expect the studio to adjust if the box office legs surprise or if the critical chatter (again, we are talking mid-60s on Rotten Tomatoes) nudges them to hold a little longer.

• Theaters (U.S.): November 14, 2025
• Predicted digital purchase (Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play): mid December 2025, roughly 3–4 weeks post-release (similar to Novocaine and The Naked Gun)
• Predicted streaming on Paramount+: mid January 2026, about 60 days after theatrical (in line with those same comps)
• Streaming exclusivity: expected to be Paramount+ only

Does the movie set up a sequel?

Absolutely. The film closes on a very pointed note: Ben survives a plane crash, reunites with his family (now living under new identities), and then storms back into the spotlight to confront Killian on stage with a gun as a fresh season of the show kicks off. That is a major departure from King's book, where Ben dies — a change King signed off on for the film.

Paramount, for now, has announced nothing. There are no sequel listings floating around industry databases, and neither Wright nor Powell has a Part 2 on their public dance cards. Powell did leave the door wide open in a recent interview.

"I feel like very few actors get the privilege to occupy this space in this time, so I am having a blast. What I realize is, a lot of people around me go, 'Hey, are you tired?' And I am going, 'No, I am really not. I am really not, I am having the time of my life!'"

Translation: if the movie hits in theaters and then pulls strong numbers on Paramount+, there is every reason to expect more.

Why this story feels extra timely

Wright and King are both clear about what they are poking at here: media manipulation, rage directed upward, and the way institutions massage the truth until it looks convenient enough for broadcast. Wright nods right at a key scene when Bradley spells out how the TV machine twists Ben’s words.

"You have that in the book. That is the scene at Bradley's apartment, where they basically manipulate what Richards has said when it goes on TV."

Stephen King: "I always thought that this would be a wonderful way to get rid of people who were dangerous to the overlords."

Blunt? Yes. Subtle? Not particularly. But this world could clearly support more stories if Paramount wants them.

Final quick hits

If you want Wright's kinetic style fused to a grimy chase thriller, this delivers. Powell is locked in, Brolin chews the scenery exactly as you want a TV tyrant to, and Domingo brings that velvet menace to the mic. The movie is currently playing in theaters. If you are waiting for at-home viewing, pencil in mid December for digital and mid January for Paramount+, give or take how the box office shakes out.