Edgar Wright on ‘The Running Man’ Gift He Gave Stephen King and the Race to Finish the Film

Long before Edgar Wright’s The Running Man hits theaters this week, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had been thinking about making it. He read the original 1982 novel by Stephen King (under his pseudonym Richard Bachman) as a boy and excitedly went to theaters in 1987 to see the film version, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wright enjoyed the adaptation but was a little let down by just how different it was from the novel.

Years later, after he’d become a successful filmmaker, he looked into acquiring the rights to remake it, but they were unavailable. A few years after that, when asked on Twitter about a movie he’d love to remake, he answered “The Running Man.†Later still, producer Simon Kinberg, who’d recently gotten hold of the rights, remembered that and reached out to Wright. It was a literal dream come true.

On November 14, Wright’s much more faithful, expansive adaptation of King’s story is in theaters. io9 spoke to the director in Los Angeles about that journey, and many other things. We talked about the film’s pace, about Lee Pace, paying homage to the original, as well as his interactions with King, which included gifting him a very special item from the set. We also spoke about the recent 20th anniversary of Wright’s iconic film Shaun of the Dead and why, years later, he now finally understands why the 1987 Running Man made the changes it made.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Germain Lussier, io9: So you famously tweeted that you would love to remake The Running Man, Simon Kinberg saw that and made it happen. What was it like when you got that email or call from him to say like, “Hey, remember that thing you said? I think I can make it a reality.â€

Edgar Wright: I mean, it very rarely happens. I can’t really think of another time in my career where somebody’s actually sent me a property that I’m already aware of and want to do. So, yeah. A once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

io9: And I read somewhere that you kind of had ideas in your head already. How much of the movie did you have made in your head at that point?

Wright: Well, I read the book when I was a teenager, and I read the book before I’d actually seen the 1987 version. So, I’m sure you do the same thing when you read the book, you start to visualize it. So, even before I knew I wanted to be a film director, I’d sort of seen a version of it in my head. But then, maybe because when I saw the other adaptation I was aware of the book, I also knew that there was a different movie that could be adapted for that material. And in fact, even before that tweet, maybe about 15 years ago, I’d actually looked into the rights of The Running Man, which at that time was sort of complicated and unavailable.

So, I think that’s probably not the first time I’d answered that question because it’s one of those questions that comes up in interviews, like, “What film would you like to remake?†But, the irony is I don’t really think that this a remake of that film. It is a new adaptation of the same source material.

io9: Which is, yeah, what’s so interesting about it, that movie stands on its own, the book stands on its own, and your movie stands on its own. Even though you’re so faithful, though, anything from that movie, besides Arnold’s little cameo, that you wanted to bring in?

Wright: I think the only things where we nod to the 1987 movie are the great man himself, Mr. Schwarzenegger, and I’d say probably the cheerleaders. [Laughs] Which is not in the book, but I did sort of in tribute to Paula Abdul’s choreography from the 1987 film. And it was actually in the script, initially. I said, “We should have the dancers. We should do that.†So, yeah, that was the other nod.

io9: Did you ever think about making the Hunters a little more flamboyant, like they were in the original?

Wright: No, I think that’s very much the 1987 film.

io9: Okay.

Wright: I thought you were going to say, would you make a film about the cheerleaders?

io9: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s the sequel. We’ll get that spin-off as a point. The movie’s so well-paced. It’s so fast. And I’m wondering, how does that work across all phases? Like, do you feel it in pre-production? It’s something you’re thinking about on set, editing, tell me a little about, sort of, how you worked that into the movie?

Wright: I think you’re doing that all the way through. I mean, obviously, in the writing process, in storyboarding, making the movie, and then, especially in the editing. And I think, as you may or may not know, we started shooting a year ago today [Note: This interview was conducted on October 30.]

io9: Oh, wow.

Wright: And we didn’t finish filming until the end of March. And so, since early April, right through to now, we’ve just been working in post. And that has been a process where I think myself and [editor] Paul Machliss and [writer] Michael Bacall, we’re just constantly in the room, just kind of chipping away at the movie. And the storytelling doesn’t end on the set. So, it’s been a really great, very intensive process, but also something where the pace is fashioned right up until the paint dries, you know?

io9: The filmmaking became a reflection on that.

Wright: No, absolutely. But also, it’s something, I just weirdly talked to Lee Pace about it. Something that me and Paul do when we’re looking at scenes is we edit the scene, and then we watch it with the sound off. You just keep watching scenes with the sound off, just to see if it kind of works as a piece of visual storytelling, even without the dialogue. And I just… pace is something that you keep working at, and then you keep looking at things like “What if we took that shot out? What if we lost that line? How does that work?†So, it’s sort of an ongoing process. I feel like I have to remember that the film is finished.

[Both laugh]

Wright: No, but let me stress, I’m very happy with the film you’ll see in cinemas.

io9: And it’s always good to talk to Lee Pace about pace, clearly.

Wright: Ah ha! I never thought of that. Very good.

io9: Now, as someone who has made so many great films, and they’re so stylistic, at what point in this movie, but also in all your movies, do you feel the most authorship? Film is such a collaborative process, but where can you feel like, “This is where I can be the most Edgar Wright�

Wright: I don’t know. I’m not sure how much that is conscious. I don’t think you ever sit down and try and think about the exact percentage of ingredients. It’s just your sensibility, both in terms of working on the script, the storyboards, the editing, how you direct the actors. I don’t really think about it too much. It’s just the way that I sort of see it. Sometimes, stylistic trends or motifs are for other people to take away from your work.

io9: So do people on set ever say like, “Oh, that’s such an Edgar thing�

Wright: I don’t know. Also, I think it’s about collaboration and stuff. Because I have a very particular way of working, but then at the same time, you’re working with a cinematographer like Chung Chung-hoon, and he’ll come up with sort of an idea for something, and I’ll say “Oh, yeah, that’s cool. That’s a great idea.†So you’re working with great artists in every field on the set, so it is like a collaboration at the end of the day.

io9: Yeah, absolutely. With the exception of Scott Pilgrim, you’ve generally kind of helped create most of your other films. What’s the biggest difference you found this time working with somebody else’s IP versus something that you created?

Wright: Well, I think for myself and Michael Bacall, it was making a film that’s more faithful to the original book, but also, whilst there are changes and stuff, being sort of true to the spirit of it. And also, like, actually working with Stephen King in terms of he had to sign off on the adaptation. And so, that’s a nerve-wracking thing. And not just nerve-wracking because Stephen King is probably the most famous English teacher on the planet, and handing in your coursework to him, and he loved it. Loved the adaptation and loved what we kept, and loved what we changed. But then that creates a new pressure. Because now, you don’t just have to live up to the film that’s in your head. I also have to live up to the film that’s in his head. So probably through the entire production, like, my main thing is “I don’t want to let Stephen King down.†But that’s a good pressure to have.

io9: Oh, for sure. A great person to try and impress. Also, it was really fun to see you working with Michael Cera again, because, obviously, we love him and Scott Pilgrim. Was there ever any thought of bringing Nick [Frost] and Simon [Pegg] at any point?

Wright: Well, I still have this thing with Nick and Simon that we said earlier on that I never want to have them in supporting parts. Like, I just think because we’ve made a TV show and three films together with them as leads, the idea of just the cameo and stuff, I think, I’d rather just keep it pure and do stuff with them in lead roles.

io9: Well, hopefully at some point. Speaking of that, though last year I’m at Comic-Con and I stepped into “The Winchester†to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Shaun of the Dead. And that was cool for me because the first time I saw it was at Comic-Con, which was probably the first time I was aware of your work. So I’m wondering, what is it like to get your head around that that movie has been out for 20 years? Talk a little bit about looking back at the legacy of Shaun of the Dead.

Wright: Yeah, when there was the 20th anniversary last year, it felt very strange because it feels like 20 years ago and also feels like yesterday. And maybe that’s because a lot of the people that I worked with on that movie I still work with now. I like to think that I’m pretty loyal to my collaborators. And so, one of the reasons we didn’t come to Comic-Con that year was because we were actively prepping The Running Man with a lot of the same people. Not just [producer] Nira Park, but [production designer] Marcus Rowland, my brother, lots of people who worked on that film worked on this as well. So, yeah, but I’m obviously just incredibly proud of that movie. And also, I just think of it as actually, Comic-Con was the start of it. I feel that that year, 2004, it was the year that my life changed. I mean, [first], the movie coming out in the UK, but particularly doing, like, the international press and traveling around the world with the film and meeting some of your heroes and stuff, it was sort of the year that everything changed.

io9: That’s awesome. Yeah, it was very nostalgic for me to do that. Okay, so when you made Scott Pilgrim after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it felt like a different level of movie for you, right? It was just a big studio movie, this and that. And you’ve obviously made other studio movies since then, Baby Driver, Last Night In Soho, but Running Man also feels like a different step for you, where you’re like, “Okay, it’s another bigger, more expansive thing.†How did the other films prepare you to do this one, and how do you think this one’s going to prepare you for what comes next?

Wright: Well, the ambition of the movie is kind of set by yourself in terms of what you’ve kind of come up with in the script. So, when the filmmaking is at its most arduous, just in terms of how complicated it is, it’s not like you can blame anybody else. You can’t curse the heavens and say, “Whose idea was this?†It was my idea. Why do I do this to myself?

I mean, the most complicated part of this film was the amount of locations and sets. But it was the thing… so it’s funny. When I saw the 1987 film, having read the book, and I enjoyed that movie, but I was a little, not disappointed, but I thought it was like, “Oh, it’s more contained. It’s all in an arena. It’s all like in a subterranean arena. It isn’t like the book where Ben Richards runs out of the network building and keeps going, and then the world is his oyster, and it’s like hide and seek on a national scale.†But now, having made the movie and done 165 different locations and sets, I realized, I’ve got to hand it to the makers of the original 1987 film, as that was a sensible, practical decision.

io9: [Laughs]

Wright: So now I understand [director] Paul Michael Glaser.

io9: Yeah, there you go. That’s so funny. So I watched this earlier this week, and the night before, I’d watched It: Welcome to Derry. And it was weird to have Derry in this and Derry in that. So what do you think about the Stephen King convergence that people are going to experience in the next couple of weeks?

Wright: Well, the great thing about like Stephen’s work, and Running Man being no exception even though it’s a sort of dystopian future, is how grounded it is and how much granular detail, and it’s sort of like a gift to adapt because there’s so much amazing world-building just in the novel. And so we tried to bring out as much stuff as we possibly could from the novel, including all of the brand names, including Freevee, which Stephen King coined in 1982, and is exactly the same spelling as Amazon. But also, like, nods to like other things.

io9: Right, like all the names on the costumes? Stuff like that?

Wright: Yes, right. I’ve got a good story about that. So that’s in the trailer. That’s not a big spoiler. But when you go into the network building, there’s more than The Running Man. There are several different game shows, and all the jumpsuits are color-coded. So you go into the locker room and you see all the color-coded jumpsuits, and they’ve all got different surnames above them. And I decided to use all the surnames of actors who had been in Stephen King adaptations, including King, because obviously he’s acted in some of them, most notably in Creepshow. So when I finally met him in person just a couple of weeks ago, after New York Comic Con, I flew to Maine to meet the man himself. I said, “I really want to meet you before the film comes out.†I gifted him the lime green “King†jumpsuit. It was for a show called Bug Out, and it said “King,†so he now owns that.

io9: That’s awesome. And not only is there a King convergence, there’s a Glen Powell putting on a disguise convergence with Chad Powers.

Wright: And Hitman.

io9: And Hitman too, but I mean Chad Powers is still fresh in our minds. Did you guys think about that, “Oh, this is going to come out at the same time as this�

Wright: No, I mean that was in the script before Glen signed on, so that’s just a coincidence. But what I liked in this is that, it may be similar to Hitman and Chad Powers as well, but I like that when he is putting on a persona, our sort of note was that he’s doing the voice for the first time. It’s not like Ben Richards is an amazing mimic. I like it when he first talks in his businessman’s voice, he hasn’t really figured out what his accent is.

io9: Last thing, I’m sure when you put out in the world, “The Running Man is something I’d like to do,†you never thought it would actually happen. So, do you have other things in your head that you would love to do? Anything you want to put out into the world that maybe 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, could possibly happen?

Wright: That is a very good question. I can’t think that far ahead. I mean, at the moment I think I’d like to sleep more than six hours.

The Running Man is out November 14.

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