Glen Powell, Edgar Wright take EW on set of ‘The Running Man’

Glen Powell looks mad as hell. The Top Gun: Maverick and Twisters star is famously likeable, both on- and off-screen, but today, Powell’s high-wattage grin is nowhere to be seen as he stares angrily ahead. And who can blame him? Clad in a red jumpsuit, the Texan is standing on a game show set with his wrists tied behind his back, facing a crowd of 200-odd people furiously shouting at him. One audience member is even holding a sign which reads, simply, “DIE.” Hell, it’s enough to turn anyone’s smile upside down.

Fear not, Glen-maniacs. Powell is in no danger this afternoon in January 2025, and that intense glare is just for the cameras. At the U.K.’s Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, the actor is playing the lead role of Ben Richards in director Edgar Wright’s Paramount-backed film The Running Man (in theaters Nov. 7), whose trailer has just been released. The action-thriller is an adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian tale, originally published in 1982 under the prolific author’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, which served as the basis for the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle of the same name. Still, if the movie’s title is familiar, the character of Richards would seem like a different kind of role for Powell, whose other recent films include the charm offensives Hit Man and Anyone But You.

“You’re exactly right,” says Powell, chatting with EW, smile now back in place, at the end of the day’s shooting. “Ben’s got a bone to pick with the world. It’s a different gear, you know. Edgar always calls it ‘Bad Mood Glen.’ He’s like, ‘Hey, I need more Bad Mood Glen!'”

On your marks!

This latest movie from the Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Baby Driver filmmaker finds Powell’s out-of-work construction worker entering the murderous titular game show in which contestants are tasked with surviving for as long as they can in a near-future America where anyone is allowed to kill them. The more time they survive, the more money they earn, with the game ending after 30 days. The catch? No one has yet lived to spend any of that moolah themselves, thanks to a group of trackers and assassins called the Hunters who are employed by this future world’s all-powerful conglomerate, the Network.

Powell’s character didn’t plan on becoming America’s most wanted. The short-on-cash Richards and his wife Sheila (played by Sinners actress Jayme Lawson) desperately need medicine for their sick daughter. As a last resort, he sets out to earn some money by appearing on one of the (less fatal) reality shows transmitted into people’s homes via Free-Vee, the future society’s version of television. Wright explains that Richards is “looking to go to the Network building to get onto a different show, to get some quick cash. Then a series of incidents lead to him becoming a prime candidate for The Running Man.”

The Network is principally represented in the film by an executive named Dan Killian, played by Josh Brolin. The No Country for Old Men actor describes Killian as “a guy who basically has created this show, and runs this show, and loves to create any scenario that he can that’s going to bring more people emotionally wrapped up into the show, regardless of the consequences.” Brolin has been friends with Wright since meeting him at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and scrolls through his phone photo library until he finds an image of the pair at the event. “I mean, look at how young he looks,” he says of Wright. “How young we both look. Two youngsters in love!”

Wright cast Colman Domingo, from Fear the Walking Dead and the film Sing Sing, as Bobby T, the extravagantly dressed host of The Running Man TV show. The actor says that his larger-than-life small screen presenter is “the most famous celebrity in the world, which is why we have to make sure he shines in every way, with his diamonds and his jewelry and his expensive Jacob & Co. watch.” Domingo partly based his characterization on Jerry Springer, having fortuitously caught the recent Netflix documentary miniseries about the controversial broadcaster shortly after arriving in London. The actor remembers that “I couldn’t sleep, because I was jet-lagged — this was the day before I started. Literally, I turned on Netflix, and there it was, and I thought, what a gift!”

Richards isn’t the only contestant introduced to the viewing public by Domingo’s host in the film. The movie features two other “runners,” played by Martin Herlihy from the Please Don’t Destroy comedy team and Katy O’Brian, recently seen in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. O’Brian explains that Wright enjoyed her performance as a bodybuilder opposite Kristen Stewart in last year’s Love Lies Bleeding, and “a few months later, he called me and asked if I wanted to do a movie with him, which I absolutely did because I was a huge fan. I read the part, and I was really excited that he thought of me for this. I usually get typecast as this very strict, military, straightlaced kind of thing. [With] this, I get to have fun, and be someone with more of a chip on her shoulder.”

So much for the characters running for their lives. What about the ones trying to put them in the ground? The Hunters are led by the masked McCone, played by Lee Pace. The actor calls McCone “a kind of murderous ghost that follows Richards through the story, trying to murder him, but also trying to put on a show for the American public.” Pace describes working on the movie as “a great time, a ton of fun. I highly recommend shooting a movie with a mask on.” Why? “It means no time in hair and makeup!” he replies.

Karl Glusman, from the horror movie The Neon Demon, portrays another of the Hunters. The actor reveals that the weapons training he undertook to play his character was overseen by a member of the British Army’s Special Air Service unit. “We had an active SAS operator come in and do a crash course with the hunters on different ways to hold our weapons,” he says. “That was interesting, because the guy, you know, he was a pretty badass dude. He was a great instructor. But I think he’s done some crazy things that most people don’t ever experience in their normal lives.”

Other Running Man cast members include William H. Macy, who plays a dealer in black market goods, and Emilia Jones, whose character, according to Wright, “comes into contact with Ben Richards at a particularly dangerous stage in the movie.” The production also saw the reunion of Wright and his Scott Pilgrim vs. the World star, Michael Cera. “He’s playing a character who’s in the book, Elton,” Wright says of the Arrested Development actor. “I think what he does in the movie is a little surprising, maybe from his previous performances. It was such a thrill to be with him and also just to see him and Glen Powell together. They’re a very unlikely duo that it was really fun to witness.”

Wright also gave a small role to his Running Man co-screenwriter Michael Bacall, with whom he previously collaborated on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The scribe can even be seen in the film’s trailer, telling Powell’s character that his image is being broadcast live on Free-Vee. “Very well-spotted!” says Wright. “Almost the entirety of his part is in the trailer. It was like, ‘Michael, you’re a big star now, in the trailer.'”

Get set!

Six years have passed since Wright shot his last feature film, the London-set terror tale Last Night in Soho, which was released after a COVID-caused delay in 2021. But the gestation period for his take on The Running Man spans decades.

“I probably started reading Stephen King books when I was 12,” says Wright, 51. “He was sort of my author. I actually read The Running Man before I saw the 1987 film.” That movie helped turn Schwarzenegger into a major star and remains beloved by many, although its leading man is not much of a fan. (In his 2012 autobiography Total Recall, Schwarzenegger detailed how studio executives and producers made the — in his mind disastrous — choice to fire the film’s original director, Andrew Davis, after shooting had begun.)

When he did see The Running Man, Wright was surprised at how little it resembled King’s novel. “In the ’87 film, they’re mostly in an arena setting,” he says. “What struck me in the book when I read it as a teenager is, [the] contestants are just out in the world, so it’s almost like the deadliest game of hide and seek. You, as a contestant, can go anywhere or do anything. The 1987 film is a pretty loose kind of adaptation of the material. The stuff on the game show is closest to the book, and then it’s completely doing its own thing. I always thought, oh, most of the book has not been adapted.”

The feeling that King’s tale had not been properly brought to the screen lingered with Wright as he established his directorial reputation with films like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Baby Driver, among others. In 2017, the filmmaker responded to a question on social media about which movie he would like to remake by suggesting he would be interested in tackling The Running Man. The director’s answer was noted by Simon Kinberg, a producer of the X-Men and Deadpool franchises. After Kinberg subsequently began developing a new Running Man film at Paramount, he naturally reached out to Wright. “When Simon was working on it with Paramount, they came straight to me,” says the director. “I think it was like 2021. The email exchange went as far as Simon Kinberg saying, ‘Are you interested in The Running Man?’ And my reply was probably, ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ It was like a gift that just came into my inbox.” 

By the time Wright began working on the Running Man screenplay, the director could claim a long, email-based relationship with King, who had provided a complimentary quote for the U.S. release of Shaun of the Dead. Still, the director didn’t communicate with the author about The Running Man “until it became a bit more real. I almost felt, if I talk to him about it, and it didn’t come together, I would feel like The Boy Who Cried Wolf. So, even though he knew I was working on it, because of the rights, I didn’t want to talk to him about it until I had something to show for it.” Bacall admits that he and Wright were worried about what King would think of their work after they did finally send him the screenplay. “We were both just on pins and needles, waiting to hear back,” he says. “It was a good response, so it was very relieving and gratifying.”

Powell had been on Wright’s radar since Top Gun: Maverick star Tom Cruise and co-writer Chris McQuarrie arranged for the filmmaker to see the film prior to its own COVID-delayed release in 2022. “Chris and Tom had screened it for me at least a year before it came out,” says Wright. “I didn’t know Glen at that point, but I think I followed him on Instagram, and I messaged him. I said, ‘Hey, I’ve seen Top Gun: Maverick, you’re fantastic in it!'”

Wright’s enthusiasm to cast Powell in The Running Man was partly inspired by the actor having never played a superhero, nor really an action hero. The director explains that Ben Richards is “a regular guy, he’s not a trained killer, he’s a construction worker who can’t get a job. What’s really important to the movie is that Glen has an everyman quality about him, because you haven’t seen him play a superhero, and he hasn’t done a John Wick-type movie. He becomes kind of an action hero in the movie, [but] he’s not coming to the game already a superhero, he’s a regular guy. That’s very much straight from the book and something that was very important to me in the movie. Glen was just perfect.”

Go!

How do you prepare to play a character who is both metaphorically and literally on the run? If you’re Powell, then you call Tom Cruise, the man who, over the past few decades, has established himself as the Fred Astaire of running around like a mad bastard onscreen. Powell remembers that, after getting the Running Man role, “Tom was my first call. I said, ‘Tom, how do you do this?’ I spent like two and a half hours on the phone with him. I took a million notes. I knew I was going to have to put my body on the line on this movie. He told me all the things to worry about, all the things not to worry about, and also how to entertain audiences at the highest level. [He said], ‘Don’t just put your life on the line, make sure all the elements around you highlight cinematically the experience.’ Because [you] can jump off a bridge from an explosion, if you don’t frame it right, if it’s not timed correctly, the audience may not even know that you’re the guy doing it.”

Powell’s physical training was dictated by the fact that Richards spends much of the film not bringing the pain but receiving it.

“I’ve never done a movie where I’ve had to get my ass kicked this much,” says the actor. “The training for me was really about making myself as bulletproof as humanly possible, because I take every hit known to man in this thing. The world’s trying to kill me, and so it gets pretty gnarly. There’s one sequence that’s essentially the entire movie of Die Hard in ten minutes that’s just brutal.”

While Powell was physically preparing his body, Wright and production designer Marcus Rowland were creating the look of the world in which Richards’ punishments take place. Eerily, King’s dystopian book is actually set in the year 2025. The new film transpires at an unspecified date, but Rowland and the director drew visual inspiration from science fiction movies released during the era in which the book was published. “We looked at anything of that period, really. Rollerball. Escape From New York. The original Running Man,” says the production designer. “Anything that would give us any sort of cues. There’s a particular feel to [those] films. [Our Running Man] is the future from that particular ’80s, really, the more dystopian future, if it had gone in a different direction.”

Last year, shortly before shooting began, Wright and Powell received the blessing of the other celebrity, besides King, most associated with the Running Man franchise, when they Zoomed with Schwarzenegger. The director describes the call as “amazing. We wanted to give a nod to the great man in the film — I’m not going to say what that was — and we sort of needed his approval for it. Glen has been in film with Arnold; he was in Expendables 3, and he knew [his son] Patrick. I said, ‘We have to talk to Arnold.’ It was an incredible call. Obviously, sometimes, when people do newer adaptations of films, it’s a bit of a touchy situation. He actually said to us, ‘Out of all of my films that I’ve made, I’ve always felt that’s one that would be a worthy remake, and I think you guys are all set up to do that.’ He basically gave us his blessing, and it was an incredibly sweet thing to do.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Having established himself as Hollywood’s newest A-list star, Powell is certainly not letting the grass grow under his feet. After wrapping The Running Man earlier this year, the actor sprinted over to the U.K. set of director J.J. Abrams’ super-secret and currently untitled new movie. “I can tell you absolutely zero,” Powell says about the latest mystery box from the Lost co-creator.

The actor is more open about his ambition to keep running — metaphorically, at least — for some time to come.

“I sure hope so,” he says. “That’s the idea. I feel like very few actors get the privilege to occupy this space in this time, so I’m having a blast. What I realize is, a lot of people around me go, ‘Hey, are you tired?’ And I’m going, ‘No, I’m really not. I’m really not, I’m having the time of my life!'”

Watch the full Running Man trailer above.