The new trailer for Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s upcoming Go90 game show The Runner describes it as “a competition unlike any ever played.” This is technically true, in the sense that no one has ever actually played The Running Man—but the idea of a nationwide audience-participation manhunt does sound awfully familiar.
The trailer gives some sense of what the show is supposed to look like (parkour) but seems to promise more than it can deliver. It won’t be hard for the game show’s chasers to find the runner if he or she is actually running all the time, and once the game becomes a footrace, it will be difficult to keep things going for 30 days. So maybe we’re looking at the extreme endgame. It’s not the first time Affleck and Damon have bet on audience participation—remember Push, Nevada?—but it’s the first time they’ve asked the audience to participate by tracking and reporting a fugitive.
Affleck and Damon’s original attempt to make The Runner at ABC years ago fell apart when the national mood changed after Sept. 11. Which is strange, because creating a nightmarish society of eternal surveillance is the most post-9/11 thing imaginable. Starting July 1, all of America can participate—if they weren’t already—except this time, there’s money to be won.
