At a time when the “leading man” feels like an endangered species in Hollywood, Glen Powell is giving it his best try to keep it alive. After leading the rom-com “Anyone But You” and the disaster thriller “Twisters” to box office success, the photogenic actor hopes to draw moviegoers to see him punch, shoot and stab his way out of repeated jams in an R-rated adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Running Man” novel.
This will be the biggest test yet of Powell’s drawing power. The Paramount production is projected by trackers to earn an opening weekend of $23-25 million with Paramount projecting $20 million. Even meeting studio projections would mark the biggest opening for a King adaptation since “Pet Sematary,” also a Paramount release, which opened to $24 million in 2019. But “Sematary” had a horror budget of $21 million, while “Running Man” has a $110 million budget with an undisclosed portion of that budget co-financed by Domain Entertainment, as part of a slate deal signed this past February.
Two other King adaptations have come out this year, with Lionsgate’s “The Long Walk” earning $35 million this fall while Neon’s “The Life of Chuck” grossed just $6.7 million from a theatrical run that topped out at 1,072 screens.
First published in 1982 and adapted into a bombastic Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle five years later, “The Running Man” is set in a dystopian future — the year is 2025 in the novel — where a TV network has taken over the U.S. government and controls all forms of media. The new film is intended to hew closer to King’s story than the original film.
The book takes its title from a TV show that protagonist Ben Richards enters to secure the future of his sick child, where he is declared an enemy of the state and hunted down by an army of mercenaries after being given a 12-hour head start. If he survives 30 days, he wins a billion dollars.
Early reviews for this new take on “The Running Man” lean positive, with critics praising Powell’s performance while more split on how writer-director Edgar Wright handles King’s material, balancing the bleak nature of the novel with crowd-pleasing fight and chase scenes. It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 62% at time of writing, and our critic William Bibbiani calls Powell a “dynamo” even if the film doesn’t quite stick the landing.
As we noted in our analysis piece on Tuesday, the coming weekend sets up an interesting competition for moviegoers’ attention as 20th Century’s “Predator: Badlands” beat tracker projections and seems to be attracting interest beyond fans of the sci-fi franchise, adding $3.5 million in domestic grosses on Monday after a $40 million opening weekend. That’s just below the $3.75 million for the first Monday of last year’s “Alien: Romulus,” which opened to $42 million.
For moviegoers looking for action in theaters in the coming weeks, they’ll have a choice between a once-dormant franchise that is enjoying the best word-of-mouth it has had in decades with a PG-13 action-adventure, or an R-rated King adaptation from the director of “Shaun of the Dead” and starring one of the freshest new stars of the past five years.
With critics less enthused for it compared to “Predator,” “The Running Man” will have to bank on Powell’s performance as a man fueled by love of his family and an overdose of righteous fury for it to leg out as an alternative to “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” over the Thanksgiving holiday. As for “Badlands,” rival distributors project a $19-20 million second weekend, which could give it a chance at holding on to No. 1 if “Running Man” underperforms.
But there’s also a chance that Lionsgate might upset the apple cart with “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” the third installment of the illusionist heist series starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher. Tracking has the film earning an opening weekend of $18-22 million, with the top end matching the opening of “Now You See Me 2” in 2016.
If it clears $20 million, “Now You See Me 3” would join the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina” as only the second Lionsgate release since the start of 2024 to pass that mark on opening weekend. At time of writing, the film has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 66%, which if it holds would be the best critics score for the series thus far.
