When Glen Powell heard his name might be in the mix for Edgar Wright’s new adaptation of “The Running Man,” he decided to be proactive.
The actor, whose star was rising thanks to “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Hit Man” and “Anyone but You,” sent Wright a text that read: “Hey, I don’t know whether this is true or not, but I heard my name might be in contention for ‘The Running Man.’ If this is true, I want to say this right now, you’ll never work with an actor who will work as hard as me. I promise. If you pick me for this role, you will not be disappointed. I’ll give it like everything I’ve got.”
“And he is true to his word, which is wild,” Wright told TheWrap.
When the original “Running Man,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was released in British cinemas in 1988, future filmmaker Wright had already read Stephen King’s novel.
“Even then, reading it as a teenager, before I even knew that I wanted to be a director, you visualize the movie in your head like you do when you read stuff,” Wright said ahead of the release of his new film adaptation. “When I saw the 1987 movie, I realized that it was a very loose adaptation of the book and only really kept a couple of elements.”
Years later, after he had started his career as a director, “I was aware that there was a Stephen King book that hadn’t really been adapted.” About 15 years ago, Wright looked into obtaining the rights to the book, which were still unavailable (“it was a little bit complicated”). He had forgotten about wanting to make a new version of the story until, in 2017, someone on Twitter asked what movie he’d like to remake, and he said “The Running Man.”
Years later, producer Simon Kinberg emailed Wright and asked, “Is it true you have an interest in ‘The Running Man?’ We’ve got the rights.” Wright said it was the “easiest response” saying yes. “But also, I don’t really consider it a remake,” Wright explained. “It’s a new adaptation of the same source material.”
“The Running Man” is, at its core, the futuristic story of an average man named Ben Richards (played in the new movie by Glen Powell and in the original by Schwarzenegger), who gets signed up for a television show called “The Running Man,” where you are mercilessly hunted and probably killed. In the original film Richard Dawson, from “The Match Game” and “Family Feud,” played the host of the game; in 2025, that honor goes to Colman Domingo.
When they finally jumped into their adaptation, Wright and his “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” co-writer Michael Becall wanted to be “more faithful” to the book in some key areas, particularly retaining Ben’s point of view through the entire film.
“One of the things that was really vivid to me about the book is it’s in the first person. I thought it would be a really intense experience if you’re with Ben Richards every step of the way,” Wright explained. Instead of getting bombarded with notes about the need to cut away to other characters, like the show’s producer Kilian (Josh Brolin) or Sheila (Jayme Lawson), Ben’s adorable wife, Wright said Paramount was onboard their approach.
“If you stay with Ben all the way and you only have the same information that he has and you only intersect with the real world through the people he meets and what he sees on the TV, I thought that would make it more exciting. So it’s really experiential,” Wright said.
And the actor he chose to play Ben Richards was none other than Glen Powell, a man of almost superhuman handsomeness who reads, onscreen, as an incredibly relatable everyman. Gone was Schwarzenegger’s stature and swagger; Wright chose someone the audience could reasonably assume would lose the game.
Now, all he had to do was make “The Running Man” faster than any movie he’d ever made before.
Finding the right runner
Powell describes Wright as “one of the great filmmakers,” someone the actor has always wanted to work with. He said that seeing Wright’s “Shaun of the Dead” for the first time was a revelation. “He’s a guy who pulls from so many different inspiration points, but his movies are unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” Powell told TheWrap. “And his style on this movie was just something that I was like, Oh, this is as cool as it gets. The fact that he chose me to be his Ben Richards was just amazing.”
He, too, was drawn to the fact that “The Running Man,” in his estimation, is one of King’s stories “that has never really been put on screen.” The 1987 version was more “American Gladiators” than the original story. “This is about a guy who’s released into the world that we know, and everyone in the world is chasing him and hunting him and trying to kill him,” Powell said. “It’s a much more epic road movie than the original movie.”
But even after Powell had been cast, they had to wait on King’s approval.
“Edgar offered me the role and then a day later, he was like, ‘Dude, I forgot to tell you, Stephen King has to approve of you. So he’s going to watch [Richard Linklater’s Powell-led comedic thriller] ‘Hit Man’ tonight.’ I remember I even brought over a bottle of champagne to Edgar’s, like an idiot, like, ‘I still have the cork from that night, since there’s two roads how this goes.’ But no, thank God, Stephen approved and has been really supportive,” said Powell.
Wright said that he didn’t find out about needing King’s approval until after he had offered Powell the part. “I think somebody from the studio said, ‘Stephen has approval on these parts. It wasn’t all parts but it was some of the main parts,” said Wright. King hadn’t seen him in a lead role, but Wright had seen – and loved – “Hit Man,” which is why that’s what they sent over to the author.
But everyone always knew it was going to be Powell.
In 2023, at the London Film Festival, Wright remembered going to a screening of “Hit Man.” Powell wasn’t there because it was in the middle of the actor’s strike. Wright was sitting in the auditorium, waiting for the movie to start, and he sent Powell a text message, sending along a photo of the screen with the “Hit Man” poster emblazoned on it. Powell expressed his disappointment at not being at the festival and then sent Wright another text: “Consider this my audition tape.”
“At that point, he didn’t even know that I was doing ‘The Running Man.’ In early 2024, when Paramount film chief Mike Ireland (who left the studio in August), started asking Wright if they were going to make the movie, the studio presented them a list of actors who could get the movie made at the budget that Wright had requested. “One of the people on that list was Glen. Me and Michael Bacall said, ‘He’s the guy who should play that part.’”
Wright explained that Powell’s “everyman” quality was more in line with the book’s reluctant hero portrayal of Richards.
“I’d call it Harrison Ford energy – he’s kind of an action hero and he’s got chops, but he’s still a regular guy. He isn’t a trained killer, he isn’t a superhero. He’s coming in off the street. I was really excited when I saw the studio suggest Glen, because it was one of those amazing bits of kismet. Like, He’s the guy I want.”
Powell was drawn to Wright, of course, but also the family man aspect of Richards.
“He’s a guy who will do whatever it takes to show up for his family,” Powell explained. “He signs up for an unwinnable game show, a game show where everyone in the world is hunting this guy. I just really identified with the frustration of someone who’s trying to do something and is not able to do it, someone who’s trying to protect the people he loves and is not able to. And that frustration turns to anger and that’s a fun gear to tap into as an actor – a guy who’s got a short fuse, throws punches first, ask questions later.”
But now that Powell and Wright were teamed up, they actually had to make “The Running Man.” And fast.
Race to the finish line
Wright and Bacall had been working on the script since 2022. In 2023, the strikes sidelined the project. Wright had even started to work on something else (“I was thinking I was going to do a smaller project”) that he figured he would make before “The Running Man.” “If I’m completely honest, ‘The Running Man’ as a script and as an idea seemed so ambitious. Part of me, probably the glass-half-empty part of me, thought, Well, this probably isn’t going to happen,” said Wright. The other project that Wright was working on had fallen apart because the intended actor wasn’t available. And in early 2024, “The Running Man” started to fall into place at an alarmingly quick rate.
Paramount executive Ireland called Wright and asked, “Why aren’t we making ‘The Running Man?’ You could be in production by the end of the year and we could have it out at the end of 2025.” Wright recalled being flabbergasted; the timeline was being presented “like a real thing.” This kind of forward momentum was unheard of. “Usually every project you’re pushing uphill. For somebody to actually fire the starting gun is extremely rare,” Wright said.
“The Running Man,” is, to Wright’s estimation, the quickest he’s ever made anything. (He was gobsmacked to learn he had less time to edit the movie than he did on “Baby Driver.”) But Powell
“We have the fortune of someone like Edgar, who can obviously attract whoever he wants, in terms of department heads and crew. Everybody wants to work on an Edgar movie. You know what kind of quality it’s going to be; it’s going to be a vision. We lucked out in that way. But the ambition of when we started shooting this to what the release date was, I can’t believe we didn’t flinch,” said Powell.
Wright echoes this sentiment. He said that it would have been “a lot more difficult,” if not downright impossible, without trusted collaborators like Darrin Prescott, his second unit director from “Baby Driver;” his “Last Night in Soho” cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung; his longtime producer Nira Park; frequent composer Steven Price; and editor Paul Machliss, who he had been working with since his early days on the British sitcom “Spaced” (among many others).
Last year, Wright was offered “Jurassic Park Rebirth,” which he said he passed on “because I knew that this was a possibility.” But he suggested to Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall that they look at Gareth Edwards. A few days later, Wright was picking Edwards’ brain at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, since Wright loved Edwards’ approach to visual effects in “The Creator.”
“I said, ‘Hey, has your agent talked to you about Jurassic World yet?’ He goes, ‘No, are they doing a new one?’ I said, ‘You should call your agent.’ Literally a week later, he’s announced as doing it,” Wright remembered. Not only was Wright responsible for “The Running Man,” but he also had a hand in “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which somehow shot even quicker and was released this past July.
Meticulous storyboards, extensive rehearsals and delegation of duties to trusted collaborators were the only ways that Wright was able to complete the movie on time. They even tested the movie a few times to make sure they were on the right track. (They were.) “Even in that time, we had a chance to hone it,” Wright said.
“We got to show it to all these filmmakers the other day, some of the biggest icons in Hollywood today and they couldn’t believe that we didn’t even start shooting this movie a year ago,” Powell said.
“I’m having a start out of body experience doing press for it, given that I only finished the movie a couple of weeks ago, but I’m very proud of it,” Wright said.
He’s looking forward to unleashing “The Running Man” on the world. And getting more than five-hours of sleep a night.
“The Running Man” is in theaters now.
