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From playing the ever-cocky Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick to the cowboy Tyler Owens in Twisters, Glen Powell has ingratiated himself to audiences in the last few years with a slick demeanor and a big, bright, energetic smile… but we’ll see him in a very different kind of mode later this year playing Ben Richards in writer/director Edgar Wright’s remake of Stephen King’s The Running Man. The protagonist is a desperate man forced to become a fugitive to provide for his family, and he doesn’t endure it all with a grin across his face. Instead, it’s an attitude that Wright gave a three-word nickname on set: “Bad Mood Glen.”
This is only part of Glen Powell’s transformation that serves as the focal point for this week’s edition of The King Beat, as the actor’s discussion of The Running Man is paired with a glorious new look at Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck – which premiered last fall to rave reviews and will be heading to theaters this summer. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
Glen Powell Discusses The Importance Of Practical Stunts In The Making Of The Running Man And Embracing Bad Mood Glen
Glen Powell spoke about “Bad Mood Glen” earlier this month at CinemaCon in Las Vegas – where he joined Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo and Edgar Wright for an on-stage chat during a luncheon for convention attendees. The event immediately followed the Paramount Pictures presentation at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace, which featured the first-ever look at footage from The Running Man.
Compared to the 1987 film of the same name, the upcoming Stephen King movie was developed because of Edgar Wright’s passion to see a more faithful adaptation of the book – and part of that is not having Ben Richards be Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque and regularly slinging out one-liners (side note: I’d argue that The Running Man has the best collection of one-liners in all of Schwarzenegger’s filmography). Richards is a hero with a chip on his shoulder, and it was in discussing the character’s deportment that he explained Wright’s three-word nickname. Said Powell,
Edgar calls it ‘Bad Mood Glen.’ I just need to turn on a little more bad mood. I couldn’t be so happy and cheery on this set. But no, we had a good time. Ben Richards was a fun guy to play.
Originally published under Stephen King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Running Man is a bleak book. The central premise is that a man essentially agrees to commit suicide via reality television so that his starving wife and sick child can live better lives. As a contestant on the titular game show, Ben Richards earns more money for his family the longer he is able to evade the program’s squad of trained hunters, but there isn’t a conclusion that sees him alive to live happily ever after with his loved ones.
Richards goes through hell as he tries to survive, and Glen Powell’s awareness of how Edgar Wright likes to make movies contributed to serious preparation on his part to get ready for the performance. The Running Man obviously employs visual effects (practically every modern major studio release does), but Wright is a filmmaker who understands the value of the practical and capturing moments in-camera. Powell felt compelled to meet the challenge, but he still ultimately felt that he was under-prepared:
I think one of the best parts is like, I’ve wanted to work with Edgar for years and years and years, but what makes him so singular is he does so much of it in-camera. There’s obviously great visual effects in the movie, but so much of it was practical. So I knew we were going to be shooting a lot of practical stunts on this movie, and I definitely got in what I call a bulletproof shape, just knowing I was gonna have to take some hits. But I don’t think I fully prepped myself for what we tackled on this one.
The footage from The Running Man that was shown showcased plenty of action, including a fight with multiple parties aboard an in-flight airplane and a scene where Richards takes a hard fall into a sewer system. Having gone to the Tom Cruise School Of Filmmaking in the production of Top Gun: Maverick, Glen Powell was game to perform as much stunt work as he could – and he was motivated by the knowledge that audiences can feel and recognize the difference. Consciously or subconsciously, movie-goers are aware of the “tricks,” and striving for practical can change a film’s impact. Powell continued,
It really works for the audience, because when you’re falling and you’re hitting the ground and you’re really doing it, the audience feels that. When the explosions are real and you’re jumping through it, it’s a different sort of experience. The audience invests more. So I’ve really prided myself on being a part of movies where you put the audience first and you want them to invest, and I think we have that with this one big time.
Here’s the bad news: non-CinemaCon attendees anticipating their first look at the upcoming Glen Powell movie will have to wait a little while, as the movie won’t be arriving in theaters until November 7, and Paramount Pictures isn’t quite ready to start ramping up the marketing campaign just yet. The good news for Stephen King fans is that there are two feature adaptations set to be released between now and then to whet appetites. Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk will be marching to the big screen on September 12, and before that we’ll have…
The Life Of Chuck Trailer Fills One’s Heart With All Kinds Of Wonderful Emotions
The Stephen King adaptations arriving in 2025 are mostly of the “exceptionally dark” variety. I’ve already highlighted the bleakness in The Running Man; Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is all about the inevitably of loss; The Long Walk could be renamed Death March: The Movie; IT: Welcome To Derry resurrects the nightmare that is Pennywise The Dancing Clown; and The Institute is all about a collection of kids who are kidnapped by a clandestine government facility.
The Life Of Chuck, however, possesses a different energy entirely, and the warmth one feels just watching the sub-two-minute trailer above is extraordinary.
For similar reasons to why the Stephen King novella on which the film is based reads as being challenging if not impossible to adapt, The Life Of Chuck is not a movie that is terrifically easy to “sell” in a trailer, but I have to applaud what has been cut together here, as it does a tremendous job capturing the atmosphere of the movie and the message that comes through the story. The dialogue from stars Mark Hamill and Kate Siegel about glimpsing the future and the worlds that exist within all of us is as beautiful as the shots of glowing skies and joy-filled dancing.
Of course, one thing that doesn’t escape my notice in the presentation of this trailer is the structure. If one were to watch this Life Of Chuck preview without any knowledge of the source material, one might assume that it is a traditional coming of age story that chronicles the eponymous protagonist’s existence from childhood to adulthood, but that would be a false assumption. Mike Flanagan’s presentation of the narrative is exactly the same as published by Stephen King in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, which is to say that events play out in three distinct chapters that unfurl in reverse chronological order.
Chuck’s childhood is prominently featured in the trailer, but the story of the character’s upbringing and his discovery of a love of dance is the film’s third act. The first centers on a teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who lives in a world that is seeing society fall apart and the world literally crumble, and he becomes fascinated by advertising that he starts to see everywhere featuring the image of a bespectacled man with the message, “Charles Krantz, 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!”
In the second act, the lives of three people blissfully collide – one of the people being Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston). Magic is generated when Charles finds himself caught up in the beat of a busker drummer (Taylor Gordon) performing on a kit in a town square, and he initiates a wild dance with a beautiful stranger (Annalise Basso).
The final act brings everything together with the story of Chuck’s childhood, best summed up in the Walt Whitman quote, “I contain multitudes.”
The Life Of Chuck stunned audiences when it premiered sans distributor last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, but an overwhelming response led to it being picked up by Neon, and it’s now set to arrive in theaters in June. It’s a life-affirming cinematic experience and a must-see – not just for Stephen King fans and/or Mike Flanagan fans, but for all movie fans.
That brings me to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but for those of you regularly hunting for news and insights from the world of Stephen King, head back here to CinemaBlend every Thursday for a fresh column featuring the biggest headlines of the past week.