Gal Gadot Can’t Stop Running (Literally) In ‘The Runner’ Trailer

Amazon MGM Studios just dropped the first trailer for their upcoming movie The Runner, and the premise alone is enough to spike your heart rate: stop moving, and your kid dies.

The Setup

Gal Gadot stars as Maia Marten, a sharp, high-powered London attorney who’s built her career on always being one step ahead. That control gets ripped away in an instant during her routine morning jog, when a single phone call shatters her world – her son has been kidnapped.

The rules from the anonymous caller (played by Damian Lewis) are brutal and non-negotiable: keep moving, follow every command, tell no one. Stop, and he dies. What follows is a sprint through London’s streets as Maia is forced to obey a string of increasingly sinister instructions — including, according to early reporting, a demand that she take out a client connected to one of her own legal cases, all while trying to figure out who’s really pulling the strings.

Why It’s Getting Buzz

Critics are already reaching for a familiar comparison point: Speed, except instead of a bus that can’t slow below 50 mph, it’s Gadot’s own two feet keeping the tension cranked. The film leans into London’s “hyper-connected” urban sprawl (cameras, transit, crowds) turning the city itself into an obstacle course where every choice has a price.

It’s also a bit of a reunion of prestige and pulse: this marks director Kevin Macdonald’s first narrative feature since 2021’s The Mauritanian. Macdonald’s got serious range — he’s the Oscar-winning documentarian behind One Day in September and Touching the Void, and he also directed The Last King of Scotland. Pairing that pedigree with a stripped-down, real-time chase thriller is an interesting swing.

The Details

• Release: Streaming globally on Prime Video, September 2, 2026
• Director: Kevin Macdonald
• Writer: Mark Gibson
• Cast: Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Rory Wilmot, Alfred Enoch
• Runtime: 84 minutes — lean and mean, no padding
• Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle
• Composer: Tom Hodge

At under an hour and a half, The Runner looks built to be relentless rather than sprawling — a single-setting, real-time-feeling chase where the clock never really stops ticking. For Gadot, it’s another notch in her growing collection of action leads after Wonder Woman, Red Notice, and Heart of Stone, but the psychological-thriller framing (a mother making impossible moral calls under duress) suggests this one’s aiming for something grittier than a straightforward action vehicle.

Mark your calendars, as The Runner hits Prime Video September 2.