Exclusive: The Running Man’s Edgar Wright says he enjoyed RRR and loved Ray’s movies
In an exclusive interview, ‘The Running Man’ director Edgar Wright shares his fondness for Indian cinema. He also spoke about his desire to visit the country.
Filmmaker Edgar Wright’s ‘The Running Man’, a high-octane reimagining of the classic dystopian thriller, is in theaters now. The film stars Glen Powell and Lee Pace, among others. In an exclusive conversation with India Today, the writer-director shared his views on Indian cinema and how he never got a chance to visit the country.
Having a strong fan following in India not only for Powell but also for Wright’s signature filmmaking style, the director expressed how much he enjoyed watching ‘RRR’. He said, “I don’t watch as much Indian cinema as I’d like to, but what I have seen, I’ve really enjoyed. Like the rest of the world, when ‘RRR’ came out I really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun seeing it in the cinema. And then, in terms of classic old Indian cinema, you know, I love Satyajit Ray’s films, the ‘Apu’ trilogy, I’m a big fan of his.”
When Wright was asked if he had any plans to visit India, he said, I have never been. It’s actually a country I’ve never been to, and I’ve always wanted to go.”
shooting challenges
Furthermore, he talked about the chaotic scale of production. From devising action sequences that pushed both the cast and crew to their limits, to shooting in difficult locations, the director shared the challenges.
He said, “Growing the production and just directing it, there are so many moving parts to it. There are so many locations, details and actors, so it’s an incredibly complex film. Overall everything made it quite difficult.”
Wright said that while the writing process with longtime collaborator Michael McCall was “challenging but fun,” the real challenge lies in bringing such ambition to life. “When you’ve written something that ambitious, you think, wow, okay, now we have to make it, you know.”
Lots of praise for Glen Powell
Glen Powell is in the movie Wright calls it one of his most challenging roles to date. Powell appears in nearly every frame – a presence Wright says proved invaluable during filming. He told us, “Glenn is in every scene of the movie. And so, you know, he’s working just as hard as I am. And so it’s really important to have a partner in a complex, challenging production, and he was amazing.”
Inside the film’s most complex sequence
Of the film’s vast set-pieces, Wright singled out one particularly memorable sequence, the YVA segment, a tense stretch where Powell’s character realizes he is surrounded by predators. “One scene that stands out is what we call the YVA sequence, in which Glenn is in a sort of halfway house and he realizes that hunters are around him, about to kill him, and he runs away from there. It’s a really complex scene because it involves interior sets, exterior sets, pieces on location, fire, water, abrasions, breaking glass, which made for an incredibly complex sequence,” Wright said.
If Edgar Wright had to choose: hunter or runner?
Given the premise of the filmWe asked Wright if he would prefer to be a hunter or a runner in such a brutal survival game. His response was immediate: “I don’t want to kill anyone, so I want to be one of the runners.” When asked if he could survive it, he laughed and said, “Not very, I think I would die very quickly in this game.”