{"id":2069642,"date":"2025-10-05T01:03:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T01:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2069642"},"modified":"2025-10-05T01:03:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T01:03:27","slug":"tom-cruise-secretly-had-a-big-impact-on-this-stephen-king-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/tom-cruise-secretly-had-a-big-impact-on-this-stephen-king-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise Secretly Had A Big Impact On This Stephen King Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Stephen King’s 1982 novel “The Running Man” is a\u00a0gritty dystopian action thriller with a scrappy protagonist named Ben Richards. It was adapted into a campy movie in 1987 that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and has since been re-adapted into a movie for audiences in 2025. This new film, starring Glen Powell as Ben Richards, is presenting itself as a mix between King’s book and the ’87 “Running Man” movie<\/a>; it features a lot of the campier elements of the Schwarzenegger film, but it also appears to be following the basic plot points of the original novel.<\/p>\n

Probably the biggest adaptive flourish apparent in the trailer is the casting of Powell as Richards. In King’s novel, the character is athletic enough to do well in the Running Man game show, but he’s also malnourished on account of the poverty he endured for decades prior to the story’s inciting incident. But when Powell has talked about Richards from the book, it seems like he’s thinking more about the Schwarzenegger version instead.<\/p>\n

“I knew that based on the Stephen King book, Ben Richards was a tank,” as Powell previously explained\u00a0in a GQ profile<\/a>. “I was like, ‘Okay, I got to be a bit of a weapon.’ And so that’s why I trained the way I trained on this. I put on a lot of muscle. A lot of it was functional. A lot of it was so I could absorb hits. But a lot of it was also authentically for an audience.”<\/p>\n

Of course, not every movie adaptation needs to be faithful to the book, and a version of “The Running Man” featuring a buff protagonist isn’t inherently bad. So, if Powell was aiming to portray a muscular, flashy lead, it’s good that action legend Tom Cruise was around to help him out. As Powell explained to GQ, Cruise not only advised him on how to train for the film’s big stunts, but he also helped him become the tank that Ben Richards is apparently supposed to be. As Powell put it:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

“I went from going, ‘Oh, I’m an actor on a movie’ to ‘I’m a high-performance athlete.’ And I’m just very lucky that I have someone like Tom who I could literally go, ‘Hey, what do I do to survive something?'”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read more: The 10 Best Stephen King Books, Ranked<\/a><\/p>\n

Glen Powell and Tom Cruise became close thanks to Top Gun: Maverick<\/h2>\n
\n