Edgar Wright says Glen Powell was the hardest-working person on ‘The Running Man’

Edgar Wright didn’t think his 2017 Twitter history would be dredged up years later. But for once, sourcing someone’s old tweets actually led to something good.

The writer-director, who’s best known for inventive original films like “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and “Baby Driver,” was asked by a fan if he’d ever reboot a classic movie, and if so, which one he would choose.

His response: “The Running Man.”

Four years later, in 2021, producer Simon Kinberg emailed him, asking if he was actually serious about wanting to reboot the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. Wright was.

“It’s very rare that something comes into your inbox that is something you actually want to do and actually thought about,” Wright told me. “That doesn’t often happen.”

Wright was a teen when he first read the original 1982 dystopian novel of the same name, which Stephen King wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman. Then he saw the 1987 movie adaptation in theaters.

“It was probably one of the first times that I was aware that a film adaptation could be drastically different from the novel,” said Wright, 51. “So even though I enjoyed the film, I was like, ‘Huh, they didn’t do the book!'”

In Wright’s version, Glen Powell takes on the Schwarzenegger role of Ben Richards, an everyman who hopes get his family out of poverty by entering the titular deadly game show, in which contestants win a $1 billion prize if they can stay alive for 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins.

Wright strikes a careful balance between revering and expanding upon the original film. There are several callbacks to the 1987 movie: a demonic showrunner (Josh Brolin) who profits off the audience’s thirst for violence, and a futuristic world that’s in shambles. But Wright expands the playing field from a sealed-off course to a countrywide scramble for survival, and adds stylized features like displaying the runner’s point tally and filming some scenes from a first-person shooter point of view.

Rebooting a beloved property on a big-budget scale is the biggest swing of Wright’s career, putting his talents as a witty storyteller who loves action-packed set pieces and memorable needle drops to the test on a tight timeline (he picture-locked the movie in less than a year). It was a fight for survival, but one Wright is glad to have won.

In the latest interview in Business Insider’s “Director’s Chair” series, Wright discusses why Glen Powell could be the next Tom Cruise, how he plans to navigate AI, and his moviemaking ethos.

Business Insider: You let it be known on Twitter in 2017 that if you were ever to do a remake, it would be “The Running Man.” Was there any time before that tweet or after that you actively looked into who owned the rights and if you could indeed reboot it?

Edgar Wright: Yeah. I think around 15 years ago, around the time I did “Scott Pilgrim,” I definitely looked into the rights. It was complicated back then, so it didn’t really go anywhere. And I had forgotten about it until Simon Kinberg emailed me in 2021 saying, “Is it true that you have an interest in adapting “The Running Man?”

Was there an actor attached to play Ben Richards when Simon came to you?

No.

So that must have also been intriguing, that you could really get in on the ground floor.

Yeah. We started working on it in early 2022, and there was the writers’ strike and actors’ strike, so we didn’t really resume in a serious way until early last year. This is what’s crazy, this time last year, we hadn’t even started filming yet!

The fact that you picture-locked this movie in less than a year — I hope you got paid a lot of money, and you get a long vacation after this.

[Laughs.] We knew what we were getting into. Also, the script was really ambitious and wild, and if I’m completely honest, part of me was thinking, this is too good, this is never going to happen. But Mike Ireland at Paramount was the one who said, “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making this by the end of the year; we can have it out in late 2025.”

Now, a lot of people in Hollywood say things that don’t come true; this is that rare case where it really happened. And to answer your question, how did I get it all done in less than a year? It was a year of six and seven-day weeks. But if someone had said to me, “Hey, you guys need a bit more time, we’re going to bump it to 2026,” I’d be bummed. So I’m happy. Also, the book is set in 2025. So the idea of having this film out in the year 2025 is wild to me.

You have never worked with Tom Cruise, but your close friend Simon Pegg has worked many, many hours with the man doing the “Mission: Impossible” movies, so I would imagine you have a sense of how Cruise works. Is Glen Powell our next Tom Cruise? And I don’t mean just how he carries a movie, but the intangibles Powell brings off-camera?

And also, Glen has worked with Tom and has learned a lot of lessons from him beyond being a movie star. There’s a work ethic.

I’ve said this to Glen’s face: We wouldn’t have gotten through this movie without somebody like Glen. Big success has come to Glen a little later. I think he’s really grateful, and I think it’s a really beautiful thing to see an actor who is number one on the call sheet also be the hardest working person on the set. All of the crew could see that.

He put me to shame. The first day he came into the office, he went around and introduced himself to every single person. He worked with the stunt team, but he wanted to do as much as he could on camera, and I know he learned that from Tom. I think Tom was probably the first phone call he made when he got the gig. Well, I know he called him, because he was asking about advice on how to do your own stunts and running.

When we were talking with Paramount on really going for it to come out this year, the studio had a list of people; these are the types of actors that we would greenlight this movie with.

Glen was the one person who I thought, “That’s our guy.” To me, he can still play the everyman. So when I saw Glen’s name on the list, I was really excited. He was extremely eager to land the part. He got my number and texted me, “Hey man, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I heard I may be in the running for your film. If there was ever the opportunity to work with you, I swear to God I will be the hardest working actor you’ve ever worked with.”

For an actor to reach out to you and say, “I promise I’ll work harder than any actor you’ve ever worked with,” I don’t want to suggest that Simon Pegg and Michael Cera are slackers, but Glen was true to his word.

I feel like Glen has gotten famous enough where if you’re making an original movie, which is what you’ve hung your hat on over your career, you need to cast him or Timothée Chalamet or Michael B. Jordan or Leonardo DiCaprio to get it greenlit. Like, if you tried to make “Baby Driver” today, would it get made without one of those people attached?

That is a good example where, by making that, it was a matter of getting the right list of names where the studio feels comfortable taking a shot on something that’s original. To be honest, it’s sad that in this day and age an original film is considered a risk.

If we were making “Baby Driver” today, it probably would have been the same scenario as it was then in terms of working off a list of names. And with that movie, we ended up with a cast that was bigger than what I had in my head. When the studio asked, “What about Jamie Foxx?” I was like, “Yeah, if he’d do it.” So I think with that movie, I got a starrier cast than I was expecting. It’s the nature of the business. If you want to get something original off the ground, you need to have a name attached.

AI is the elephant in the room when it comes to the creative process going forward. What are your thoughts on it?

Let me be very clear: We don’t use AI in this movie, but we do touch upon the theme. Now, to answer your question, if AI is an aggregate of other people’s work, it can only be generic. It’s an amalgam of other people’s ideas. So, at any level, if that’s what you’re using it for, you’re bypassing original thought, and you’re bypassing artistry. So it seems like the dumbest thing to have to say out loud, but it’s like, hire humans.

Have you prepared yourself for if you’re in a meeting with a studio and they ask, “Well, we can do that with AI, right, Edgar?”

I think conversations like that are already being had.

You’ve had this conversation already?

No. But I know it’s not lurking around the corner; it’s happening already. To be honest, most of it is about trying to cut costs. But ultimately, we have an industry that’s hurting and a lot of actors that are out of work, so the idea of just bypassing actual jobs that you could give people is not something I want to be involved in.

I think using that technology as number crunching — there are elements of the business where it’s helping people get through something in less time. But if it’s meaning artists are going to lose jobs, I don’t want to be involved in that.

There’s literally a line in this movie about this. Glen asks Josh Brolin, “Why don’t you just fake the whole show?” And Brolin’s character says, “Believe me, we’ve tried; the audience lives for these happy accidents. The human acts of randomness are what make the show.”

You are making this movie at Paramount, which is now owned by Skydance. By the time you make your next movie, Warner Bros. will more than likely have new ownership. How are you navigating the movie industry these days?

It’s an interesting question. It’s the nature of the business that the sands are shifting all the time, and I, like anyone else, am just reacting. I mean, this movie went through three different regimes at Paramount. But on the flip side, I’ve worked with Universal and in the 20-plus years Donna Langley has been there the entire time. So who am I to predict what will happen in the next six months? [Laughs.]

I feel very grateful to have made this movie. The ambition of it and the scale of it and wildness as a studio movie, it’s the kind of movie I would want to see if I weren’t making them. I try to make films that if I weren’t the filmmaker, I would be the perfect audience member.

Sincerity is really important, and sometimes you can tell when people don’t necessarily love the genre that they’re working in. When you can feel that this filmmaker loves this material, that infectious energy is palpable. That’s not to say they aren’t arduous; any film is tough to make. But with my movies, I hope you can feel the glee with which they’re made.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

“The Running Man” is in theaters now.

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