Stephen King’s novel in 1982 “The Running Man” is a grainy dystopian action thriller with a disjointed protagonist named Ben Richards. It was adapted to a Campy film in 1987 which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger and has since been readjusted in a film for the public in 2025. This new film, with Glen Powell as Ben Richards, presents itself as a mixture between King’s Book and the film of “Running Man” Running Man “; He presents a large part of the camping elements of Schwarzenegger’s film, but he also seems to follow the basic points of the original novel.
The greatest apparent adaptive development in the trailer is probably the casting of Powell as Richards. In King’s novel, the character is quite athletic to do well in the game running show, but he is also badly nourished because of the poverty he endured for decades before the incident of the story. But when Powell spoke of Richards of the book, it seems that he thinks rather of the Schwarzenegger version.
“I knew that on the basis of Stephen King’s book, Ben Richards was a reservoir”, as Powell explained before in a GQ profile. “I said to myself:” Okay, I have to be a bit of a weapon. “And that’s why I trained the way I trained.
Of course, all cinematographic adaptations should not be faithful to the book, and a version of “The Running Man” with a buff protagonist is not intrinsically bad. So if Powell was aimed at portraying a muscle and flashy lead, it is good that the legend of the Tom Cruise action is there to help him. As Powell explained to GQ, Cruise not only advised her to train for the big cascades of the film, but he also helped him to become the reservoir that Ben Richards is apparently supposed to be. As Powell said:
“I went to leave:” Oh, I am an actor on a film “at” I am a high performance athlete “. And I am just very lucky to have someone like Tom who could literally go,” hey, what am I doing to survive something? “”
Glen Powell and Tom Cruise have become close thanks to Top Gun: Maverick
Powell worked alongside “Cruise” on the set of “Top Gun: Maverick”, although he almost did not play in the film. As Cruise said to GQ in the same profile, Powell had tried the role of Goose’s son, who ended up being played by Miles Teller; Powell rather offered the minor role of Lieutenant Jake “Hangman” Seresin, but he initially refused. It was simply not the leading role he was looking for.
Cruise has convinced her to take the job anyway, and the two seem to have developed a nice mentor / mentored relationship since then. Powell recalled how Cruise gave him advice not only on how to form his body, but also on how to meet all the additional attention that came with its increase in fame. As Powell explained:
“He essentially said:” Hey, it will become really, really strong. It is your job to simply lower the volume. Remember that you have your hand on this switch. You have your hand on the possibility of refusing this noise or refusing it. “And really lowering the noise and trusting your own intestine was a real boon for me.”
The Powell Cruise mentoring is logical since the youngest actor has similar dreams of being a long-lasting star, that is to say someone who could even direct his own series of action films in eight parts on the line (at cruise and films “Mission: Impossible”). Like Cruise, Powell also has a beautiful but distinct face and has been capable of acting with much more scope than many gives it credit (especially in films like “Hit Man”). Powell may not have what it takes to give a 100% exciting representation of Ben Richards of “The Running Man”, but he seems ready to stay on the big screen for decades to come.
“The Running Man” will open in theaters on November 14, 2025.
