Glen Powell shared that his mother was very worried about his stunts in “The Running Man.”
In Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, the Top Gun: Maverick actor plays Ben Richards, a desperate dad who enters a dangerous game show where he is hunted by deadly Hunters for a cash prize.
The role involved a significant amount of running, along with various stunts that worried his mother, Cyndy.
“I’m getting to do some really cool stuff that really worries my mum,” he said in a behind-the-scenes featurette for Entertainment Tonight.
Powell added that he had a similar thought about the stunts before the shoot, as he recalled thinking, “‘Man, I’m gonna get my a*s kicked for two hours in this movie.'”
“You have a guy that’s basically on the run, at the highest stakes game show of all time, where the survival rate is zero, and he’s trying to beat the odds,” Powell told the outlet. “It’s a great underdog story.”
The Running Man director Edgar Wright noted in a recent interview with Empire magazine that Powell performed many of his own stunts, which included a dramatic leap off a bridge and scaling down a building while wearing just a towel.
“(The bridge stunt) took a lot of planning to work it all out. And to see Glen finally do that jump was pretty wild,” he said, before adding of the towel scene: “That’s not a trick. Glen really is abseiling down the building with just a towel.”
The Running Man, which comes to cinemas on November 7, also stars Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, and William H. Macy.
The previous Running Man adaptation was released in 1987 and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards. When Powell got the role, Schwarzenegger gave him his blessings and even made a brief cameo in the trailer for the new film.
“[His son] Patrick Schwarzenegger is a great friend of mine, and I asked Patrick if I could talk to Arnold and I hadn’t seen Arnold since we shot Expendables in Bulgaria,” Powell told PEOPLE*.*
“Arnold gave us his full blessing and we get to give Arnold a very specific fun gift from the movie in a couple of weeks here. So I’m very excited to see him,” the Twisters actor said.
