When you think of a dystopian drama about a brutal, dangerous competition with life-changing sums of money on the line, your mind might not immediately jump to, say, a historical epic. However, Glen Powell thinks about his new film, The Running Man, a little differently.
“I would say the structure of the film is more along the lines of Braveheart and Gladiator,” Powell tells GamesRadar+ when we speak with him in London. “For example, ordinary people who are trying to save individual family members or make up for terrible things that have happened to family members, and end up being pulled into a larger story where their problems are not unique, but their perception of the world and the way they interact with their world… they almost find humanity in the inhuman.”
Based on Stephen King's novel of the same name (first published in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) and directed by Edgar Wright, the film follows Powell's Ben Richards, an unemployed father who desperately needs money to buy medicine for his sick daughter. Out of options, he competes in the reality show “Running Man”, where contestants can win $1 billion if they manage to evade a team of Hunters within 30 days. Trick? No one has ever succeeded in doing this…
