There are very few filmmakers with styles and signatures so distinct that you know exactly who made the movie without having to look at the credits. There are likely even fewer having as much fun as Edgar Wright, who undertook his most ambitious project to date with The Running Man. While fans can easily pinpoint the hallmarks that define his movies, you’d be hard-pressed to find out what those hallmarks are from the man himself. “I’m the only person who can’t answer that,” Wright explained. “It’s a thing where you’re making stuff, and at a certain point you have a sensibility, but it’s just who you are.” In many ways, The Running Man is both the most Edgar Wright film he’s ever made while still somehow restrained. Restrained probably isn’t the right word — Reserved? No — effective. Because he’s still keeping his trademark shots and editing that are done so well in all of his movies, but he’s picking and choosing his spots so well. He’s using his toolbox in places where it’s most necessary. “I think if there are some little idiosyncrasies that are not in this, it’s probably because I know that I’ve outgrown them,” said Wright about his approach to his newest film. “But you kind of feel that you’ve done them at a certain point.” With The Running Man, Wright was eager to get to the core of Stephen King’s novel while keeping the core of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ’80s adaptation. “There were lots of things in this that were new and challenging and ambitious. The great thing about making films is the chance to challenge yourself, or do something that you’re scared of, or do something you haven’t done before. I think in this, the thing was very different. The most ambitious thing about it was the fact that the entire movie takes place over a massive footprint.”
‘The Running Man’ Is the Biggest Movie in Edgar Wright’s Career — and It’s Stephen King’s Fault

Image via Paramount Pictures

What separates The Running Man from other movies in his filmography is scope — it is the biggest project he’s ever undertaken as a filmmaker. They filmed scenes across Europe, traveling from England to Scotland to Bulgaria, to match the scale of Ben Richards’ (Glen Powell) journey as he attempts to survive the titular gameshow in an effort to provide a new life for his family. Paramount Pictures entrusted Wright to pull this off, and that’s not lost on him. “It’s not like I can blame anybody else. I can’t curse the heavens,” said Wright. “I co-wrote the script and I set the level of ambition, mainly because I wanted to be true to the book.” Given that the book, originally released by King under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, is so revered in the author’s bibliography, there’s an undeniable level of pressure to match to do justice to the work. Especially this year in which King adaptations are having a moment. The Running Man comes off the heels of the critically acclaimed The Long Walk and The Life of Chuck, as well as the debut of HBO’s prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry. So the challenge came down to Wright not just executing on a vision established in King’s work or honoring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘87 film, but to make the film his own as well. “I got to collaborate with Stephen King on this in the sense that he had to read the adaptation and sign off on it. So it was nerve-racking to hand in our homework to Stephen, but then also really gratifying that he loved the adaptation and loved what we kept and loved what we changed and loved what we expanded,” said Wright.
Down to the Last Detail, Edgar Wright Planned It All

Image via Paramount Pictures

“But then that creates a new pressure because now, making any movie, you’ve got to live up to the movie that’s in your head. But now I had to also live up to the movie that’s in his head as well.” King signed off on this, and he couldn’t let him down now. For nearly 30 years, Wright has woorked alongside producer Nira Park, who was on hand for The Running Man. As one of his closest collaborators, she helped keep Wright on track to deliver his vision to the screen. “Edgar has a unique imagination and amazing clarity of vision, which he is brilliant at communicating with the rest of the team. But even though he has the whole movie in his head from the outset and he storyboards every last frame, he is a real collaborator,” said Park. “He wants to hear the opinions of everyone on the team. And he makes people feel listened to. He has amazing attention to detail, and he plans meticulously. Nothing has not been thought through before filming starts.” That infectious attitude permeated to the actors, where Wright cast the inimitable Josh Brolin as the film’s main villain. Marking the first time the two worked together, even Brolin could pinpoint what excited him to work with a filmmaker like Wright. “There’s something humorous and absurd in everything that he does,” Brolin said. “We’re dealing with a really kind of heavy subject … You look at his early movies and it’s just filled with that. Then you get into heavier subjects. “Baby Driver was like that. It was serious, but it was also super entertaining. So, I don’t know how he brings what he brings, but I do know on the set he’s very focused on everything equally. Some directors are just your actors, some directors are just the ambiance, and he kind of sees everything.”
The Director’s Infectious Energy Impacts Everyone on Set

Wright’s deft ability to blend humor, heart, action, and tension has heralded his success as a filmmaker. He knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it, and he surrounds himself with collaborators able to execute his vision. Added Park, “We have this catch phrase on set which is, ‘It is in the boards,’ because if he gets asked on set about what he wants for a specific prop or a piece of costume, etcetera, he will say, ‘It is in the boards.’ And it nearly always is, he has already thought about it, and it has been drawn into the boards.” Wright knows exactly what he wants, although practice and execution are entirely different animals. He is constantly adapting, responding to the movie as it begins to take shape. He learned this lesson early in his career while making Shaun of the Dead, the comedy-zombie cult classic that put him on Hollywood’s map. “There were a couple of lines of dialogue that we had to cut out of the movie because — it came in the finale, and it was after Barbara, Shaun’s mother, had turned into a zombie and then had to be shot. There were a couple of jokes that came too close afterwards. We did a test screening and they didn’t really land. I remember saying to Simon [Pegg], who said, ‘I think the audience needs to grieve for a second.’” That helped Wright achieve a balance, to “thread the needle,” as he put it. It’s an attention to nuance that spreads from the top downward, which is something that Park values in all of her collaborations with the filmmaker. “He has incredible work ethic and his genuine enthusiasm for what he is doing,” Park said. “Because he is the biggest fan of cinema you get the sense that every day he feels lucky to be there, which makes everyone around him want to do their best work. There is this balance of confidence and humility that makes you trust him very quickly. “He is very loyal and when he is at the monitor laughing loudly because he is loving the performances he is watching. The energy is infectious.”
Why ‘The Running Man’ Had to Take the Show on the Road

Edgar Wright talks The Running Man.Image by Jefferson Chacon

The qualities Wright brings to his set are valuable to the people he works with, which is why so many actors continue to collaborate on his productions. It also attracts other admirers who are eager to appear in his films. “The reason I did this movie was because of Edgar Wright,” said Lee Pace, who plays the mysterious assassin Evan McCone. “Let me say this, he called and pitched the character of the story to me before I’d read the script, and his pitch, the script, and the movie that I saw last Friday are exactly the same.” In the film, Pace’s McCone hunts Richards across the country while Richards slowly gathers allies to help in his efforts to stay alive. The film is structured as a road movie, with Richards traveling from place to place and gathering resources when he can. Powell’s take on the character is a change of pace from Schwarzenegger, and Wright called the young actor “beyond incredible in the role.” Because it’s a faithful adaptation of the book, they had to change the trajectory of what first film accomplished. “The road movie structure is very much in the book, and it’s something that’s not in the previous adaptation,” Wright said. “When I watched the 1987 film as a teenager, I’d already read the book and I was sort of surprised and maybe — even though I enjoyed the film, I was a bit disappointed. ‘Oh, they didn’t go out into the world like they do in the book.’ And now, having made the movie and done 165 locations, I’d like to say to the makers of the 1987 film, “I understand why you did that.” Wright couldn’t help but laugh at himself for underestimating the challenge of putting together a film like The Running Man as faithfully as he did, but his collaborators trusted him fully. “He is technically masterful,” Pace added. “He understands the tone of what he’s trying to make perfectly and can communicate it to everyone, which is the hardest thing to do on a set full of independent contractors, people who are coming around to work together for a few months to make something. So, watching him put together those great big, thrilling set pieces that take two weeks to shoot, incredible. You not only felt the comfort of, like, ‘Oh, I’m in the hands of a really masterful director,’ but, ‘This is fun. This is a good time.’” The result became 137 minutes of non-stop action, with Powell proving his action man status in one of the biggest films of his already impressive career. As the shoot came together, the team began working on the post-production even while filming. It was then that Park understood that Wright was crafting something special.

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“Because our post was so short and intense, we ended up working endless seven-day weeks and crazy hours,” Park said. “We normally bring some trusted filmmakers into the process to watch early cuts and get feedback, but we did not have the time to do that on The Running Man. So we had to just trust ourselves, and when you are so in the weeds, it is hard to have real perspective. “I was really nervous when we sat down for our first preview. It was quite early on in the process, and I did not know what an audience would think. But there was a moment early on when the whole audience laughed, and there was a real energy in the room from then on. It made me think it was going to be okay and that audiences would hopefully really like it.” Now, The Running Man is finally here, and all of that hard work has made its way to the big screen. It’s a herculean feat much like Richards’ own journey, and Wright owes so much to the people who helped make it happen. “The fact that it’s finished now is sort of wild to me. Obviously, like many things have changed both in the world and even in the business and even in terms of just this movie from the first time talking about it to now … A lot of people have worked really hard on it, and we’re really just excited to get out there.” Additional reporting by Perri Nemiroff.

The Running Man

Release Date

November 14, 2025

Director

Edgar Wright

Producers

George Linder, Nira Park, Simon Kinberg