Glen Powell is presently on the path to become a major Hollywood star. He turned a lot of heads a few years ago with his scene-stealing turn opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, and he has since shined brightly in the romantic comedy Anyone But You and showcased a lot of charisma as a storm chaser in Twisters. He’s in the process of showing movie-goers that he can do a lot of different things very well, and I love the comparison that has been made by director Edgar Wright to a pre-Die Hard Bruce Willis for his role in the upcoming The Running Man.
Based on the novel by Stephen King (published under his pen name, Richard Bachman), The Running Man isn’t set to hit theaters until November, but Empire has a published a preview of the film, and it includes interesting commentary from Wright about his leading man. When Die Hard was released in 1988, audiences principally knew Bruce Willis from his role on the TV series Moonlighting, and the writer/director thinks that Glen Powell is capturing a similar energy with his performance in the upcoming thriller:
I felt it was important to see somebody who hadn’t really done something like this before. It’s similar to Bruce Willis, when he was still the guy from Moonlighting, before he did Die Hard, where that adds to the suspense. Can they make it?
In the year 2025, we look back on Bruce Willis‘ career thinking of him as a confident, invulnerable action star, but when Die Hard first came out, audiences invested in the fate of John McClane because they saw him as the funny detective David Addison. We’ve seen Glen Powell fly jets and track tornados, but there will be a question in the minds of movie-goers if he can survive racing through American society with a huge target on his back.
While many are probably aware of The Running Man via the Arnold Schwarzenegger film from 1987, the upcoming Stephen King adaptation hones much closer to the book – which features a protagonist who is not Schwarzenegger-like in the slightest. Ben Richards is a destitute man living in a dystopia, and when he becomes desperate to afford medicine for his sick child, he volunteers to compete in one of the state-run TV network’s dangerous and deadly game shows.
In the Schwarzenegger film, the hero is basically dropped into a maze-like set that sees him do battle with a collection of deadly, themed foes, but the source material is much more grounded and sees Ben Richards released into the world and hunted in cities and suburbs. He not only has to evade a team of trained killers but also must be aware that people are rewarded for snitching on his location. This was an element that Edgar Wright was particularly excited to explore with his version of The Running Man, as he explained to Empire:
One of the things about the book that I loved was the fact that Ben Richards is out in the world on his own, so it’s like the deadliest game of hide and seek. It does feel like making a road movie in a lot of ways: a very intense, dangerous road movie. Ben is moving through different environments and meeting different people as he tries to survive 30 days out in the wild.
The Running Man‘s stellar cast also includes Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Katy O’Brian, Daniel Ezra, William H. Macy, David Zayas, Jayme Lawson, and Colman Domingo, and production began late last year. Following Osgood Perkins’ gory and hilarious The Monkey and Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, it’s set to be the third Stephen King movie released in theaters in 2025, and will be playing on the big screen everywhere on November 7.