The 2023 Movie That Convinced Stephen King To Cast Glen Powell In The Running Man

When Glen Powell heard that director Edgar Wright was sitting in an auditorium getting ready to watch "Hit Man," the movie he starred in from 2023, he wrote him a text message saying (via The Wrap), "Consider this my audition tape." The movie was one reason that Wright loved the idea of casting Powell as everyman Ben Richards in the filmmaker's next movie, "The Running Man" (see Looper's review here). There was just one problem: he needed Stephen King, the writer of the book the movie is based on, to approve of the actor. To get that approval, Wright showed King "Hit Man," that same movie that made him fall in love with Powell.

It turns out that despite Powell's rise to prominence in Hollywood, King hadn't seen him in a lead role, despite the fact that Powell's starred in movies like "Anyone But You" and "Twisters." But it was "Hit Man" that showed the range of what Powell could do.

"Edgar offered me the role [in 'The Running Man'] and then a day later, he was like, 'Dude, I forgot to tell you, Stephen King has to approve of you,'" Powell recalled, adding that Wright told him that King was going to watch "Hit Man" that evening. "I remember I even brought over a bottle of champagne to Edgar's, like an idiot ... But no, thank God, Stephen approved and has been really supportive."

Contrary to its title,"Hit Man" is not about a hitman. It's about an introverted psychology professor, Gary Johnson, played by Glen Powell, who freelances for the New Orleans police department. It's a job that eventually has him posing as a hired killer, something the department finds Gary is surprisingly good at. All of a sudden, Gary is moonlighting in a bunch of sting operations and racking up arrests. That is, until a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona) asks Gary to kill her husband.

The movie — which got an A+ review from Looper — is loosely based on the story of the real Gary Johnson, a professor who posed as a hitman for the police in the 1980s and '90s. However, it was Powell who suggested that he and his co-writer and director, Richard Linklater, could go outside the facts and, in perhaps the most memorable part of the film, put Powell's character in all types of disguises as a fake assassin.

Wright clearly adored what Linklater and Powell did with the film, and "Hit Man" convinced King to approve of Powell for "The Running Man." And even though "The Running Man" appears to be a box office failure, Powell is likely still thrilled to be a part of it because, according to him, Wright is "one of the great filmmakers."