5 Things We Learned About Edgar Wright's The Running Man [NYCC]

The Year of Stephen King Adaptations just keeps rolling on, culminating with perhaps the most highly-anticipated one yet. Fan-favorite director Edgar Wright has been circling "The Running Man" for quite some time now, and that dream is finally set to become a reality in just a few weeks. Led by Glen Powell as Ben Richards, stepping into the enormous shoes left by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 "Running Man" movie, the story focuses on a dystopian game show in which various contestants are pitted against fearsome Hunters. The mission: Stay alive for 30 days and win the billion-dollar grand prize. Fail, and you're doomed to a grisly death by one of countless trigger-happy vigilantes. No pressure!

Thanks to the power of the acclaimed book and a gloriously '80s movie that has gained something of a cult following over the decades, it's all been building to a buzzy spectacle for the remake at this year's New York Comic Con. During the film's hour-long NYCC panel, Wright was joined by Powell and co-star Lee Pace (who plays the masked villain known as Evan McCone) to hype up the blockbuster that's already on most everyone's radar. In between heaping praise on the movie's cast and crew, spoiling the attendees with a few exclusive clips and a full-length trailer further teasing the carnage to come, and even showing some love for Powell's beloved dog Brisket (though, sadly, he left the pup at home in Austin, Texas during this promotional tour), the A-list panelists dished out some tantalizing tidbits on what we can expect when the film hits theaters this November.

Here's the five most fascinating things we learned about "The Running Man."

Some call it manifesting, some say it's simply shooting your shot — either way, filmmaker Edgar Wright deserves credit for making this "The Running Man" remake happen by tossing it out into the internet and letting the universe do its thing. /Film previously broke this news back in 2023, when producer Simon Kinberg confirmed that Wright's tweet about how "The Running Man" would be the one remake he'd ever want to do successfully planted the seed in Kinberg's mind. When he and Paramount eventually embarked on the long and complicated pursuit of remaking the film, he remembered that one social media post and, well, the rest is now incredibly close to becoming history. During the NYCC panel, Wright expanded on his own personal backstory involving Stephen King's work and the reason why he zeroed in on this particular retelling:

"I had read Stephen King's Bachman books [his early works written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman] back when I was a teenager, and 'The Running Man' was one of the books [...] I read it before I saw the 1987 film. And so when I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, I was very aware that it was very loosely based on the book. And so I just felt there was a cool part of the story that just hadn't been adapted. My favorite remixes are the ones that kind of do something different from the other ones. So, this is not an attempt to remake that film. This is something that's more faithful to the book. So, that was always the excitement for me."

Wright went on to reveal that he actually bumped into Kinberg backstage before the panel, which prompted him to go further down memory lane. As he explained, "I'm pretty sure [Kinberg] saw that tweet because in 2021, I got an email saying, 'Hey, is it true that you have an interest in doing 'The Running Man'?' And I was like, [dryly] 'Yes.' It was an absolute gift of an email, to have a project you actually thought about manifest itself in your inbox." Who says the internet can't do some good every now and then?

Ah, yes, welcome to one of our favorite meaningless debates for every film nerd. Where does the line blur between a remake of a previous film and a simple adaptation of the same source material? Well, we can apparently look to Edgar Wright's "The Running Man" to help solve that little riddle. No, there's no getting around the outsized imprint left by star Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Paul Michael Glaser from the one and only other film based on Stephen King's original 1982 novel. Additionally, both Wright and Powell were quick to assure fans that they have nothing but the utmost respect for what came before. But, at the same time, it's clear that the project's cast and crew wouldn't have bothered with this in the first place if they weren't bringing something unique and different to the proceedings.

The end result, by all accounts, is an experience that plays out more like another adaptation of the source material, as opposed to a Disney-style remake. As pressure-packed as that may have been to live up to the standards of fans, however, Wright had an even more imposing figure to please: King himself. Fortunately, Wright's script (co-written by Michael Bacall) passed the test. As Wright explained:

"I'd say it's more faithful to the book. We do pay homage to the great Arnold in the movie. But yeah, it's more faithful to the book than the 1987 film. But it's also an adaptation as well. Probably the most nerve-wracking part of the production is Stephen King read the screenplay before we started filming. And he's like the most famous English teacher in history, so I was like, 'This is so nerve-wracking to have to hand it on over to Stephen King.' But he loved the screenplay and so it was great, it was real kismet."

Of the many reasons to look forward to "The Running Man," one that can't be swept under the rug has to do with Glen Powell leading a true-blue action movie for the first time. The rapidly-rising actor has starred in genre projects before like "Twisters," "Anyone But You," and "Hit Man." This movie presented a new challenge, however, and one that required the actor to lean on an unusual habit he first observed on one of his lesser-known films. You may know that, before he caught his big break, Powell previously played that unfortunate Wall Street suit who ends up on the wrong end of Tom Hardy's fists as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises." After that, though, he appeared in 2014's "The Expendables 3" and got a close-up look at the biggest action stars on the planet doing their thing.

What could he have possibly brought over from that experience to "The Running Man," you ask? Well, when pressed to recall any specific moment he witnessed and kept in his back pocket, he replied:

"I watched a bunch of those guys do a pump up before takes. Those guys had weights on set. I stole that. One of my favorite memories on 'Expendables,' I got to ride a tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger for a special screening. That was the peak of my life."

There's a good reason for the weights, as it turns out. As glimpsed in various trailers, one clip shown during the panel showcased Powell's Ben Richards making a hasty escape from an apartment building while fresh out of the shower ... and wearing nothing but a bath towel. Yeah, we'll leave the rest up to your imagination.

It's funny how things work out. When Stephen King first sat down to write "The Running Man" in the early 1980s, he decided the dystopian thriller needed to be set far enough in the future for the premise to pack an extra punch. The setting he chose, naturally, was 2025. The irony certainly wasn't lost on Edgar Wright when this quirk of timing led to the impending release of his new adaptation of the same story in the same year. As fun as that may be for internet talking points, however, Wright didn't want to draw too much attention to this. In fact, his movie never once actually specifies which year it takes place in. According to the filmmaker, this was a conscious decision right from the start:

I will say, we don't say in the movie what year it is. It's not in the script, 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 at '2001' technology yet. Or like 'Escape from New York,' where they say, 'The year is 1997.' So, we decided not to put a year on it, to just imagine like it's a different tomorrow."

The changes don't stop there. The biggest difference from the original movie is, amusingly enough, one of the key choices Wright made to stay closer to the book. Wright went on to describe how this "deadliest game of hide and seek" was somewhat confined in the 1987 film, taking place almost entirely in an underground arena with no real sense of scope and scale to it. The remake changes this by opening things up considerably to allow for anyone to join in on the hunt ... though Wright would end up regretting this. Despite complaining as a teenager, those gripes vanished when the time came to actually film all these expanded sequences. "Now, having done a very hard shoot with a 170 locations, I realized, 'Ah yeah, those guys were smart.'"

No, we're not talking about Michael Cera. Thus far, the marketing campaign for "The Running Man" has made no secret of the fact that Edgar Wright recruited his old friend from 2010's "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" for a key supporting role. During the panel, Wright glowingly spoke of Cera's performance as a "blast of energy" injected into the story at a crucial moment. Cast as the character of Elton Parrakis, a bearded and glasses-wearing rebel who helps Glen Powell's Ben Richards along the way, Cera once again brings his slightly zany vibes to a world that's always dialed up to 11. But as fun as it was to reunite with his old collaborator 15 years later, the secret sauce behind "The Running Man" came from a somewhat lesser-known name — one with just as significant ties to "Scott Pilgrim" as well.

Although history remembers it as an Edgar Wright film, "Scott Pilgrim" wouldn't have been the same without the contributions of co-writer Michael Bacall, who once again teams up with the acclaimed filmmaker on "The Running Man." You're likely familiar with his work, even if you didn't quite know it (and that's not even counting his dozens of acting performances), primarily through his writing on the "Jump Street" films. It should come as little surprise, then, that Wright decided to turn "The Running Man" into a mini-"Scott Pilgrim" reunion in more ways than one, smashing together various tones and genres into one of the year's last must-see events.

"The Running Man" sprints into theaters November 14, 2025.