Edgar Wright promises an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man that will be more faithful to the book, while also delivering a “couple of nods to the 1980s film.”
The writer-director spoke about the adaptation process and what fans can expect from the Paramount Pictures film, releasing in theaters on Nov. 14, while joined on the Empire Stage at New York Comic Con by stars Glen Powell and Lee Pace. Ahead of a trailer drop, which is below, and following a special message and introduction from fellow star Colman Domingo, Wright addressed a 2017 tweet about his desire to do the adaptation, pointing to reading Stephen King’s The Running Man when he was a teen.
“I read it before I saw the 1987 film, so when I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, which was very loosely based on the book, I always felt that there was a whole part of the story that just hadn’t been adapted,” he said. “My favorite remakes are ones that kind of do something different from the other one. So this is not an attempt to remake that film. This is something that’s more faithful to the book, so that was what was exciting for me.”
As part of that adaptation process, Wright said King saw the script and approved. “He’s like, the most famous English teacher in history,” the director said, laughing. “I was with Michael Bacall,who wrote the film with me, and I was like, ‘This is so nerve-racking to have to hand in our homework to Stephen King.’ But he loved the screenplay, and so it was great. It was a real kismet.” Wright added later that King, in an email, described the adaptation as “’more faithful to the book to keep the fans happy enough to keep me on my toes and excited.’ And I was thinking, ‘OK, I’ll take that.’”
While discussing his own take on the character and how much he pulled from the book and Schwarzenegger’s performance, Powell joked, “In terms of what I took from Arnold, I do the entire performance in an Austrian accent,” before addressing his take. “Ben Richards is the ultimate underdog. He’s a normal guy who is facing off against the most powerful oppressive system. So there’s no greater stakes and no smaller odds.
He continued: “When Edgar and I first started talking about this role — I try to be a nice guy in real life, but he’s like, I need bad mood Glen. I need to turn on something a little different in you. And so Ben Richards, in the book, is very frustrated with the system. He’s been pushed down. He’s trying to provide for his family, and every option has been taken away from him in order to do that. So this is a man who’s just trying to provide for his family in a place that doesn’t allow him to do that, and there’s a growing frustration and anger there. I got to unleash that part of my personality.”
At one point during the panel, Powell revealed that King approved his casting after having watched his recent film Hitman. “The only interaction I had is when Edgar offered me this movie, and I was like, ‘yes.’ He’s like, ‘You’re my Ben Richards,’ And I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’ Later that night, you’re like, ‘By the way, you have to be approved by Stephen King,’” Powell recalled. “He’s like, he’s gonna watch Hitman tonight, so I had to wait overnight for Stephen King to watch Hitman and hope that I still had the role in the morning.”
Speaking to Powell’s work on the film, Wright and Pace both pointed to the actor’s commitment. “There’s something great about doing an action film around a character who’s vulnerable and fallible and who you think is gonna die at any second,” said Wright. “It was a really ambitious shoot, an exhausting shoot, and if I had anybody less hard working and diligent than Glen, I just wouldn’t have got through it.”
“Talk about someone who gives it 1,000 percent and makes it look easy,” added Pace. “He shows up every day with a level of commitment that can bring the same commitment out of our scenes.”
Pace, speaking to his own character and work on the film, shared that he loves “playing characters, playing people different from myself and weird.” He continued: “[Wright] described this phantom chasing Ben Richards, this executioner. And I thought this is going to be a good time.” To help him deliver as Evan McCone, Pace worked closely with the costume designer. “I love developing the costume,” he said. “We had a really good time collaborating and figuring out what this guy was going to look like because he’s a showman. He’s the star of this reality show. He’s got to present. He’s got to show up. So we figured out a lot of different ways around how he looks. The mask was a key to it for a lot of reasons. I think the mask is really cool.”
Amid discussing their own characters, the panel took a moment to shout out several of the film’s other stars, including Martin Herlihy, Emilia Jones, Michael Cera, Daniel Ezra, and Katie O’Brien, who worked with Powell on Twisters. “Him and Glen together make such an exciting and fun double-act,” Wright said, speaking to Cera. The director also pointed to Domingo’s showmanship and performer’s spirit, which easily won over the extras on set. “He came in and had the crowd of extras eating out of his hand by the end of the day. They’re chanting his character name,” said Wright.
Going beyond the cast and speaking to the film’s world-building, Wright explained that they avoided clarifying what year the movie is set in to avoid hiccups that frequently come with technology use in futuristic sci-fi, as well as to speak to King’s universe.
“The book was written in 1982, and it is set in 2025, and the jacket of the 1982 book says, ‘In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president. They run for their lives.’ That is on the book jacket, so the fact that this film is coming out in 2025 is wild,” Wright reflected.
He continued. “We don’t say in the movie what year it is. It’s not in the script, and we don’t say, and we kind of just act like it’s a different tomorrow. As a sci-fi fan, films never go far enough. 2001[: A Space Odyssey] is one of my favorite films of all time, but also, I’m sad that we’re not [using] 2001 technology yet. So we decided not to put a year on it, to just imagine it’s a different tomorrow. But I think Stephen King fans will be happy about quite a few products, straight from the script that make it in there.” Among them, a nod to a soda brand, a breakfast cereal and Schwarzenegger on a $100 bill.
“We called him before we started filming, because he had given us permission to put him on my money, and I told him on the call, ‘We made you the 100.’ He goes, ‘I’m very happy about that,’” recalled Wright.
Speaking to the locational detail and production design of the film’s universe, Wright highlighted that filming took place in three different countries, including Bulgaria and Scotland. “It’s like a road movie,” said the director. “The thing that was kind of crazy about making it is it felt like, sometimes, you were doing the show. My production designer told me that, because there’s so many moving parts to it, and there’s so many locations — because Ben Richards is on the run — it’s only like 168 locations and sets in the movie. That was probably the most ambitious thing for me.”
Speaking to how they created the world Ben exists in, “One of the biggest differences with the previous adaptation, and truer to the book, is that the game is out in the world,” said Wright. “So Ben Richards is playing the world’s deadliest game of hide and seek with Lee as the lead Hunter on your tail. In the 1987 film, they keep it pretty confined to like an underground arena.”
Wright pointed to decades of reality shows since the 1980s film, which helped shape the movie’s look and feel, which the director described as a mix between UFC and American Idol. “Since the 1982 book, we’ve now had nearly 30 years of reality shows that are much closer to what was in the book. So it was an amazing thing to make this movie, picking things from reality shows from all over the world — formats and the design of it.”
Powell noted that some of the film’s stark contrast between the game and the real world comes through in Domingo and Josh Brolin’s characters, “who are in this fun, bright reality world, and I’m a guy who’s like, ‘this shit is real for me. This is life or death.’”
