The trailer has just been released for the latest poker movie to hit the big screen, and this time it’s an online poker movie. The movie, “Runner Runner” stars Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake and is slated for a September 27, 2013 release in theaters everywhere.
“Runner Runner” is about Richie Furst (Timberlake) a Princeton college student who goes off on a quest to a remote island to confront Ivan Block, the owner of the poker website (Affleck) who he believes cheated him out of his tuition money in an online poker scam. Ivan turns out to take Furst under his wing, becoming protege and go-to guy, until the FBI ropes him into participating in a scheme to bring Block down.
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One of the movie’s stars, Affleck, is also known off-screen as an avid high-stakes poker player. And in fact, in an interesting twist on life imitating art (or the other way around) this movie trailer evokes vivid recollections of Affleck’s admitted involvement in the recent Ultimate Bet Poker scandal in which the owners admitted to using special software to peek at players’ hole cards and thus defraud them from millions of dollars. Affleck was one of the thusly defrauded, in his case out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While Affleck’s friend and writing partner, fellow Hollywood star, Matt Damon was in a gambling movie once before (the 1998 cult hit “Rounders”) this will be Affleck’s first appearance in a gambling related film.
“Runner, Runner” was written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who also wrote “Rounders”. And the film was directed by Brad Furman, who also directed”The Lincoln Lawyer”.