The inspiration for one character in The Running Man came from watching X Factor conspiracy videos on YouTube, says Edgar Wright

Glen Powell as Ben Richards in The Running Man

(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

Edgar Wright's new movie The Running Man is based on a 40-year-old novel set in 2025 and, although Stephen's King satirical vision of our reality TV-obsessed, hyper-surveilled present is ever-prescient, Wright still wanted to update the source material for a 21st Century context.

One way he does this is through Bradley Throckmorton, played by Daniel Ezra, a gang member who Ben crosses paths with in Boston. In both the novel and the movie, Bradley is vocally anti-government and opens protagonist Ben Richards up to the idea that the government-run TV network is a propaganda machine. The character gets a thoroughly 2020s update for the film, though – he's a part of an online community dedicated to unravelling conspiracies about The Running Man competition, with clips from his anonymous videos filling in key plot points.

"Bradley, that character, is in the book, but the idea that he's this super-fan-stroke-conspiracy theorist was a really fun idea," Wright tells GamesRadar+. "To sort of take the ball and run with that, yeah, that was definitely a new addition that felt like something that we know about now in terms of a way of talking about [reality TV]. I mean, we literally watched when we were writing conspiracy videos about X Factor on YouTube, of which there are tons of conspiracies."

Glen Powell stars as Running Man contestant Ben Richards, who reluctantly enters the televised competition in a desperate attempt to help his sick daughter. If you can outrun a team of elite Hunters for 30 days you win $1 billion, but the odds are stacked against you – and no one has ever been successful (yet…).

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.

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