Glen Powell to fill Arnold's humungous shoes in Edgar Wright's Running Man movie

Powell will play a slightly more human-sized version of Schwarzenegger's lead, who was once described as "scrawny" by author Stephen King

By William Hughes  |  April 12, 2024 | 12:33am
Aux News Edgar Wright
Glen Powell to fill Arnold's humungous shoes in Edgar Wright's Running Man movie
Yes, we intentionally composed this to make Powell look teensy. No, we don’t regret it. (Right: Glen Powell, Photo: Gagik Arutyunyan/Shutterstock, Right: The Running Man, Photo: Moviestore/Shutterstock)

It’s not new to note that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 no-brainer action flick classic The Running Man, while pretty fun on its own merits, is a pretty lousy adaptation of the Stephen King story on which it’s based, from its leading man on down. Schwarzenegger has fun in the role, sure, trading quips with an excellent Richard Dawson, and running around in an outfit that makes him look like the model for the original box art of Mega Man. But he’s a far cry from King’s version of determined survivor Ben Richards, who, in the original book (written under the author’s old Richard Bachman pen name) is a wiry, smaller guy who gets chased across the entire United States by bounty hunters, not a behemoth fighting a bunch of video game bosses in a TV studio.

Announced back in 2021, Edgar Wright’s planned film version of King’s book has already promised to be more faithful to the source material. Now it’s made one big step in that direction: Casting “Got a long-delayed sequel or remake? Toss me in it!” poster child Glen Powell into the role of Richards. Now, Powell isn’t necessarily the “scrawny,” “pre-tubucular” character from the Bachman novel. But, at 6'0", he’s also not, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger, suggesting Wright is committed to keeping his movie at least a bit closer to its source material. (We’ll bet you 20 bucks they don’t stick with the book’s original ending, though; even 23 years later, that one’s not going to, uh, “fly” in post-9/11 America.)

Although it was announced with some fanfare back in 2021, Wright’s adaptation of King’s book has been basically pretty radio silent for the last three years. The Shaun Of The Dead director co-wrote the film, working with Michael Bacall on the script.

 
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