While covering New York Comic Con for The Nerds of Color, I had the opportunity to interview Director Edgar Wright and stars Glen Powell and Lee Pace about all things The Running Man. The film hits theaters on November 14.
In a near-future society, The Running Man is the top-rated show on television—a deadly competition where contestants, known as Runners, must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins, with every move broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and each day bringing a greater cash reward. Desperate to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is convinced by the show’s charming but ruthless producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), to enter the game as a last resort. But Ben’s defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite—and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.
Paramount Pictures took over the Empire Stage and excited fans with an exclusive look at The Running Man during a panel with Edgar Wright, Glen Powell, and Lee Pace. Multiple scenes were shown along with a trailer.
“What’s wild is this time yesterday, I was still mixing the movie in London. I literally was mixing, got on a plane, and now I’m here,” the director, co-writer, and producer expressed. “So, it was wild to go into the sort of convention hall and actually show, you know, we’ve had test screens of the movie, but actually knowing that the public’s about to see it, and I mean, at the end, you just watched 12 minutes and a trailer. It’s like, oh, there’s still a lot more movie, don’t worry. We’re not spoiling too much. So I’m excited for people to see it because it’s a ride and it’s a full meal, and I’m really excited about it.”
Pace added, “The life of the film, we’ve been working on it for so long. Edgar’s been working on it daily for so long, and then this is such a special moment when we get to show it to the audience for the first time. I’m a theater boy, so I love that interaction you can have with an audience. You seldom get that with a movie because you’re watching it in special screenings or on your computer. So, you have to really cherish those moments when you can share that experience with an audience, and we had one of those moments today at Comic Con.”
Meanwhile, this was Powell’s first time at NYCC. The actor even got out of his chair to watch the trailer on stage and stopped to meet fans after. “It’s really funny, just going down memory lane with you on that because it just happened, but sometimes these things are really overwhelming, and I like how you clued into that, which is like, it’s my first time watching the trailer. Obviously, we’ve been in the edit on it, but getting to watch the trailer with fans. When you’re on set, these are the people that you’re thinking about. Edgar and I would sit there, and we’d go, ‘Okay, where’s the audience right now? How is the audience reacting? How do we keep them engaged? How are they feeling? How can we make this a great cinematic movie moment?’ And really, those are the conversations that are happening.”
He continued to comment, “It’s really fun to be in a hall of true fans, like it is a place where we get to look fans in the eyes, and we get to cheer along with them. So, for me, this is why you do it. I remember, in Top Gun: Maverick, Jerry Bruckheimer had one of his traditions: he went to theaters on opening night in a Sprinter Van. He goes from theater to theater, and he watches the last 10 minutes of a movie with fans. For me, it really reminds you of, like, this is why you do it: to experience it, to be in a theater with people watching the thing you care about and the thing you made, and to watch how audiences respond is as good as it gets. So I’m very honored to be here today. It’s a really special first trip.”
At the story’s core, it’s about an ordinary man going against extraordinary odds, and about the system working against him to save his family. It’s a theme that audiences will have no issue relating to.
“I think it’s one of the reasons that The Running Man is sort of the perfect movie for me to really cut my teeth on in terms of being out in front of something of this magnitude, and it’s something that Edgar and I have talked about, which is I’ve never related to being a superhero. I don’t feel super; I’ve never felt extraordinary in any way, and I always feel like a guy who does something he doesn’t want to do for the people he loves. I can understand that guy. I can understand the heartbeat of someone who goes into a fight not knowing if he’ll get out, a fight he won’t win, and that’s the fun part about Ben Richards, the survival rate of The Running Man is zero,” Powell explained. “He is going into an unwinnable fight for the people he loves, and I just find exactly what you’re saying, which is [that] it’s a very universal idea. We all have people that we would go to the ends of the earth with to save, and I think that’s why people are really responding to the movie, is you don’t have to feel extraordinary, you have to feel human.”
Pace also opened up about the genre and playing with all of the different elements as an actor, saying, “The movie is tense. It is an action movie. You know what I mean? And it’s fast, it’s violent, but it does have a sense of humor because Edgar Wright directed it. I play a stone-cold killer, but at the same time, I find him really funny. I find him absurd in a way, this kind of dude in a mask, showing off his gun. I mean, he’s a badass, but he’s also kind of an actor.”
The Running Man is an adaptation of the acclaimed bestseller by Stephen King. “You saw some little bits of the sequence, where, I think, a big part of the movie for me in terms of the adaptation was retaining the subjective point of view, because a lot of other films of this [genre] or even dystopian game show films, they’ll usually cut away to something else. You’ll see the organizers of the show, go behind the scenes, or have flashbacks and stuff, and this movie stays with Glen. You saw the moment today where he runs out of the studio, and you’re just with him the rest of the way, all the way to the end,” Wright shared. “There are very, very few scenes in the film that don’t have Glen in them or Ben Richards at the center of them; maybe sometimes there are TV shows or bits of TV shows that you see. So doing those sequences from the book and trying to capture the intensity of the first-person narrative was really important, exciting, and challenging. And so, that was what I was really excited about doing.”
As for why it is so important to stay with our main character, he pointed out, “I mean, most of my movies do it. If you think about it, Shaun is in every scene of Shaun of the Dead, Nicholas Angel is in almost every scene of Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim is in almost every scene of Scott Pilgrim, and Baby is in every scene of Baby Driver. I guess in Last Night in Soho, it differs because she sometimes becomes somebody completely different, but she’s still her. But most of the time, it’s that thing of like, I really believe in those films, and usually those films that do that have one spoiler scene, like Taxi Driver is a good example. Every single scene is with Travis Bickle at the center, except for the one scene with Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel. But even that scene, you think, is this really a scene or is this what he’s imagining is happening inside? So, I’m a big fan of that kind of structure, and it makes it challenging in the way you’re shooting it, because you have to conceive the action in a way that the audience doesn’t really have any information that Glen doesn’t.”
