His wife is lucky to have work as a hostess in a bar but when their daughter gets sick they simply can't afford the medicine she needs.
After he pleads for his old job back and fails he resolves to audition for one of the many exploitative reality game shows that pass for entertainment. Not "The Running Man" though: that would be simply suicidal.
No good will come of this.
Edgar Wright goes for another adaptation of the Stephen King story with patchy results.
Beyond the basic premise it shares little with the Arnie movie, but that's fine. That first adaptation was camp as fuck 80s madness and to try and do that again would be pointless.
This is sort of more grounded, albeit in an "American dystopia turned up to 11" way. So Richards hides using fake ID, disguises, hanging out with marginalised people, hopping rides on freight trains and so on. The baddies look like ICE agents driving around in APCs with flying camera drones swarming but that probably wasn't intentional given production timelines, just a timely coincidence. No naff superhero/wrestling style costumes here.
The action is good, Colman Domingo makes for a fun host of the show and Josh Brolin works as a more behind the scenes Producer figure for Killian
Where it lets itself down is in how heavy handed the messaging is. Everything in this is set up to be a story about corporate power and media manipulation, absolutely baked in to its bones. Then they insist on talking about this at every possible moment in the dialogue, it's clumsy beyond belief. There's also a whole section with a hostage that comes just as you think it's maybe wrapping up that manages to make it simply too long.
It's not actively bad it's just a bit disappointing given some of it hints at what a less preachy version could have said more effectively, 6/10.