In Edgar Wright's new take on The Running Man, violence and entertainment are inextricable.
When out-of-work father Ben Richards runs out of options to secure a paycheck to buy vital medicine for his daughter, he reluctantly signs up for The Running Man, a reality show in which contestants must evade a murderous task force for 30 days in order to win $1 billion.
While Josh Brolin's slimy TV exec Dan Killian is the brains behind the scenes, there are two other employees of the government-run Network who are vital for keeping the bloody wheels turning on the ground: Colman Domingo's Bobby T, the show's charismatic host, whose job it is to rile up the audience against the competition's unwitting contestants, and Lee Pace's Evan McCone, the show's masked lead Hunter, who orchestrates the pursuit of Richards.
Despite the outlandishness of the movie's events, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, Domingo says he looked to real-life figures for inspiration when it came to donning Bobby T's glitzy suits. "I started to look at old school talk shows and chat shows like Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer and all that," he tells GamesRadar+.
"Where we've gotten to with the way that we are with people is because of these talk shows that changed the game. Jerry Springer changed the game, and the way people actually deal with each other – the lack of civility that people have. So I really leaned into Jerry Springer because I thought that was interesting. He was just bringing people on to fight, and saying, 'Oh, well, I had nothing to do with it, I just asked the questions.' People go to their id."
But while Bobby T is just instigating violence, McCone is the one holding the gun – literally. "He's a violent person, but he's performatively violent," Pace acknowledges. "Dangerous people don't actually show you their gun, and it's the last thing you would do if you're trying to be really dangerous. But he's trying to project a certain kind of violent machismo."
On The Running Man, it's all about putting on a good show, no matter the cost, which Pace thinks is a reflection of our current entertainment industry.
"It makes me uncomfortable to think that we're just so complacent with violence and hostility around us and that we find it entertaining," the actor adds. "I think it makes people feel strong to watch violence being directed at someone else, it makes you feel like, well, that's not me.
"And I think with our characters, we're people who are on the other side of that, and we're creating an entertainment in the fiction of the show where people get to enjoy being on our side of the violence. We're the good guys. Ben Richards is the bad guy in the surreality of the reality show."
The Running Man is out now in UK cinemas and arrives in US theaters on November 14. For more, check out our guide to the other upcoming Stephen King movies on the way.
