Glen Powell’s Hollywood rise to stardom has been years in the making, and now people are calling him the next Tom Cruise. After stealing the spotlight in Top Gun: Maverick, turning rom-coms upside down with Anyone But You (and those Sydney Sweeney rumors that followed), Powell is proving he has everything it takes to be the next big movie star.
Now, he’s teamed up with director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho) for The Running Man. Based on Stephen King’s dystopian novel and a reimagining of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, it's a cinematic, hilarious action film that is genuinely great.
Joined by a talented cast that includes Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, Katy O-Brian, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, MichaelCera, and more, Powell stars as Ben Richards, a man forced to live for his life on live TV in a future where entertainment and survival collide.
Ahead of the film's release, HOLA! Sat down with Powell to talk about stepping into Schwarzenegger’s shoes, the chaos that comes with fame, his most embarrassing audition story, and why The Running Man feels more timely than ever.
Glen Powell, left, and Colman Domingo star in Paramount Pictures' "THE RUNNING MAN."
The original Running Man is so iconic. How did you deal with the pressure of stepping into Arnold Schwarzenegger's shoes?
Oh man, well, you know, the fun part is we got to screen this for Arnold last night. I don't know if you've heard that yet, but Arnold loved the movie, was so impressed. I think just on the aspect of like, he's done so many action movies. He knows what it takes to make a good action movie and a great action movie, and this one really just works on every level. And so he saw not only the filmmaking aspect, but also as an actor, he's like, "it's exhausting." I mean, you just have to keep an energy level to a certain place, and you're throwing yourself around, you're taking real hits like the whole time.
You know, whenever you sort of retread on anyone's territory, you always want to ask their permission. So I got to FaceTime with Arnold ahead of time, but the best part about this story is that it's not the Arnold version of the movie. In ’87, they kind of took a bit of creative license because, just logistically, it's really hard to do what we're doing in this movie. They isolated it to like an American Gladiators-type studio and had people hunting in there, which makes it a little more practical to shoot.
Our movie is out in the real world. It’s one guy released in the world where the entire world is hunting him, which makes it very difficult to shoot, very epic, very cinematic to watch, but hard to shoot. He talked about his version, and they had a lot of drama — I think they lost their director at one point — but he was very proud of the version we put on screen because this is really the first time the Stephen King book has ever been put on camera.
You got approval. That’s awesome. So anger is kind of Ben's superpower. Has there ever been a time in your life where it becomes Ben's superpower?
Yes. I mean, look, we all have. That’s the thing I love about my job. I’m a patient person in general, but we all have a hot streak and a fire in our belly. I think the thing I connected with is that Ben's trigger is a bully. I also hate a bully. I hate people who punch down. You can punch across, you can punch up, but don’t punch down. And Ben, you know, the thing that I just kept paying attention to is how often people punch down. It’s a terrible thing, but the more you observe it, the more fire you get in your belly about it.
I love Ben. He’s a fun character to play because sometimes getting to unleash that is nice. It’s meditative a little bit — to let your anger out.
Yeah, it looks very therapeutic.
Yeah, it was therapeutic, yeah.
So we see Ben try out for the network. You've done your fair share of auditions. Do you have a horror story that still haunts you?
have way more bad auditions than good auditions. I was not a good auditioner — maybe I cared too much. I’ve always been kind of built for set, you know? I’ve been doing this s**t since I was 10 years old. I’ve auditioned for everything. There were times in my career when I auditioned for three things a day and had to knock on people’s doors for weeks just to get a shot to get into a room where they weren’t even rolling the camera.
So yeah, I’ve had some really bad ones. I think a particularly bad one that haunts me is Piranha 3D. I auditioned for Piranha 3D. I did an improv where I get eaten by a piranha on an office room floor. Not a proud moment, not a good audition. So yeah, hope you never find that footage.
Glen Powell stars in Paramount Pictures' "THE RUNNING MAN."
This movie also holds up a mirror to society — about class, power, privilege. What do you hope people walk away thinking about?
One thing I really love about this movie is it’s obviously nonstop action, a Hollywood thrill ride. But when you leave the theater — I got to show this movie to a bunch of my friends the other day — they were like, “That movie was so intense, that was incredible.” And then the conversations that happened afterwards were about how timely this movie is.
Stephen King wrote this book in 1982, set in 2025. It’s coming out in 2025 and it’s the most familiar world. This is a world that’s got all this color and dimension. It doesn’t look like our world, but it feels like our world. All the things that are happening — deepfakes, AI, how we label heroes and villains — it’s pretty incredible how timely this movie is.
In a world where humanity feels like it’s getting lost — we scroll, we judge other people’s lives, we wish for other people’s pain in a weird way — this is a movie that’s really about humanity, about coming together, listening to each other, and not trusting the forces that are trying to tear us apart.
Glen Powell stars in Paramount Pictures' "THE RUNNING MAN."
Ben has to deal with some fake narratives surrounding his life. Is there a rumor you've heard about yourself that you'd love to outrun?
It is a constant, constant battle. The fun part about this phase of my life is I’ve been dreaming to do things like this my entire life. I used to pretend to do action sequences in my backyard and fake fights and all that stuff. And then there’s this other side that you don’t really expect — the noise that comes out of nowhere that you just have to deal with. Yeah, that’s its own battle, but it is what it is. It’s uncomfortable at first, but now you get to laugh at it, you smile at it.
Stephen King is obviously a legend. Do you remember your first introduction to his work?
Oh God, that’s a great question. I would say it was It. I think it was one of those books in high school that everybody was carrying around, everybody was reading. I mean, I hate clowns. I remember my first introduction to a clown, that’s for sure.
Stephen King — he has such an interesting sense. Edgar knows Stephen King really well, JJ Abrams knows Stephen King really well, and so I’ve gotten to be around a lot of Stephen King emails and just seeing his creative process. He’s filled with so many stories. He actually wrote this story under a pseudonym because he was churning out so many stories, writing so much, that he wrote it under the name Richard Bachman. So it’s kind of crazy — there’s a Richard Bachman novel, but it’s actually written by Stephen King.