FUTURE TENSE

IN A DYSTOPIAN NEAR-FUTURE, ΤΗΣ RUNNING MAN SEES GAME SHOW CONTESTANTS PURSUED AND KILLED AS THEY CHASE A LIFE-CHANGING JACKPOT. SFX HUNTS DOWN DIRECTOR EDGAR WRIGHT AND STAR GLEN POWELL TO DISCUSS HOW TODAY'S WORLD HAS CAUGHT UP WITH STEPHEN KING'S'80S NOVEL

- JAMIE GRAHAM

REALITY TV. Cruelty and bloodlust packaged as entertainment. A huge division in wealth and a broken system. Fake news. Megacorporations taking over the running of America. When Stephen King published The Running Man, one of the novels he released under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, in 1982, his 2025-set story laid out a future that seemed as fanciful as it was gritty. In it, the titular game show pits desperate contestants against a pack of trained Hunters, with all of America the arena. The longer the fleeing contestants avoid capture, the bigger the prize money, and survival for 30 days means going home with a billion dollars. The snag? To be caught is to be killed, and how to avoid such a fate when not just the Hunters, but every citizen can take part, with cash prizes offered for information on the runners' whereabouts.

Now, as Edgar Wright's adrenalised adaptation charges onto cinema screens, King's radical vision of a totalitarian, dystopian America looks bang on the money. "I feel like Stephen King has been Nostradamus a couple of times," chuckles Wright in mid-September. The director of Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver and Last Night In Soho is in good spirits, buoyed by his film playing gangbusters to a test audience the night before. "It's kind of crazy that the book is set in 2025. We don't say in the movie what year it's set in; we always said [among ourselves] it's a different tomorrow."

"That's the best part about sci-fi," muses star Glen Powell, his baseball cap turned back to front. In the movie, Powell plays reluctant hero Ben Richards, a blue-collar, out-of-work construction worker who signs up to The Running Man in an effort to raise money for the medication that his sick daughter so desperately needs. "It can encapsulate what is familiar and deliver it to you in a fun, entertaining way. A lot of what we explore in this movie should feel very, very familiar."