1 Year Later, Glen Powell’s Stephen King Sci-Fi Thriller Is Officially Taking Over Paramount+

Glen Powell‘s face will soon lead yet another sci-fi movie, as he joins forces with a veteran director in the genre for a hotly anticipated, big-budget theatrical spectacle. The film in question is The Great Beyond, directed by J.J. Abrams, which is set to star Wednesday favorite Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey (Sex Education), and Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) alongside Powell. “I wanted it to be big and something that generations of different people can all go to the theater to see,” Abrams promised in an interview at CinemaCon, with excitement for the November 2026 release continuing to build.

Before Powell’s latest sci-fi effort hits theaters — and prior to his work in Judd Apatow‘s next comedy, The Comeback King — his 2025 sci-fi adaptation of a Stephen King favorite continues to dominate streaming. Of course, we’re talking about The Running Man, featuring Powell alongside a star-studded cast including Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, and more. The second adaptation of King’s 1982 novel, following the 1987 effort directed by Paul Michael Glaser, 2025’s The Running Man sadly failed to capture the magic of the source material either critically or commercially.

Falling to mediocre reviews, despite the best efforts of talented director Edgar Wright, The Running Man was also a box office disaster, earning just $68.5 million worldwide against a bloated production budget of $110 million. Thankfully, the film has since redeemed itself on streaming, becoming a favorite on Paramount+, where it ranks as one of the top ten movies in the U.S., at the time of writing. The current chart-topper on the streaming site is Scream 7, the 2026 horror sequel that frightened its way to over $200 million at the box office.



















Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz
Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like?
Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky

Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.

🏜️Paul Atreides

🖖Capt. Kirk

✊Princess Leia

🔦Ellen Ripley

🔥Max Rockatansky

01

How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher?
The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.





02

What is your greatest strength in a crisis?
The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.





03

What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for?
Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.





04

How do you relate to the people around you?
Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.





05

You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do?
How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.





06

What has your heroism cost you personally?
Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.





07

How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in?
Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?





08

When everything is on the line, what keeps you going?
The answer is the most honest thing about you.





Your Hero Has Been Identified
Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…

Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.


Arrakis · Dune

Paul Atreides

You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.

  • You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
  • You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
  • Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
  • That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.


USS Enterprise · Star Trek

Captain Kirk

You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.

  • You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
  • Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
  • Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
  • That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.


The Rebellion · Star Wars

Princess Leia

You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.

  • You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
  • You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
  • Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
  • That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.


The Nostromo · Alien

Ellen Ripley

You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.

  • You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
  • Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
  • You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
  • When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.


The Wasteland · Mad Max

Max Rockatansky

You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.

  • You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
  • Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
  • Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
  • That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.

The Running Man isn’t the only recent King adaptation proving popular on American streaming. Whilst Paramount+ subscribers indulge in that sci-fi adventure, Starz users are propelling the most-acclaimed King adaptation of 2025 into the streaming top ten. Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence‘s The Long Walk, based on King’s 1979 novel of the same name, stars Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, and debuted in September last year. Earning widespread acclaim from both critics and audiences, the movie earned a respectable $63 million worldwide, against a reported production budget of $20 million.

The Running Man is currently available to stream on Paramount+. Stay tuned to Collider for the latest streaming stories.


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Release Date

November 11, 2025

Runtime

133 minutes

Director

Edgar Wright

Writers

Michael Bacall, Edgar Wright

Producers

Nira Park, Simon Kinberg, Edgar Wright


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