06/06 Update: Official version below replacing the terrible “Entertainment Tonight” preview.
06/05: “Hey, you know what would be a good idea? Let’s premiere the trailer for our hot new movie with Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake, and let the airheads on ‘Entertainment Tonight‘ talk over most of it!” Okay, no one actually said that sentence, but sometimes you have to wonder what marketing departments are thinking. That said, here’s part of the first trailer for the thriller “Runner Runner,” brought to you by the people who aren’t even John Tesh and Mary Hart.
Anyway, the film, penned by David Levien and Brian Koppelman (“Rounders“), and directed by Brad Furman (“The Lincoln Lawyer“) will tell the story of a Princeton student who gets cheated out of his tuition playing online poker, but winds up as the right hand man of the dude running the site. But that dude is a pretty shady character who has no problem literally throwing people to crocodiles, and it’s a part that Affleck seems to have almost too much fun playing. Then again, this is only a segment of the full trailer and we don’t really see much of the solid supporting cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie, Oliver Cooper, Sam Palladio and Ben Schwartz.
Fast forward the first thirty seconds or so to get to the actual “trailer,” and we’ll add the full version once it drops presumably later today. “Runner Runner” opens on September 27th.