One of my most anticipated projects on the 2025 movie schedule is Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man. The trailer alone shows Glen Powell in a ton of precarious action-packed sequences, and that includes one where he has to rappel down a building while only wearing a towel. Now, the actor has opened up about filming that sequence, and let’s just say it doesn’t sound like it’s for the faint of heart.
In this upcoming book-to-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name, we’ll see Glen Powell’s Ben Richards literally running for his life. The Running Man trailer shows him jumping off a bridge, fighting pilots in an airplane, and yes, rappelling while wearing essentially no clothes. While talking to EW about that near-nude scene, Powell said he was all for it at first, explaining:
I didn’t protest that one…I found it very, very funny, and something that I’ve never seen in a movie before. We’ve all gotten a Postmates delivery out of the shower before. But can you imagine if there were guns along with it?
For context, during this scene in the movie, Powell’s character is trying to take a shower in a place like a YMCA when he’s found by a group of people who are trying to hunt him down. So, he has to, as the title of the movie implies, start running. That leads to a point where his only option is to rappel off a roof.
The Top Gun: Maverick actor explained that the sequence is “pretty much all of Die Hard” in 10 minutes, which sounds intense. However, when you add in the lack of clothing, it becomes even more extreme.
It gets more challenging, though. While the Anyone But You actor had no problem with the scene and was all for his costume in it being a towel, he hadn’t considered what the weather would be like when they actually filmed this scene for the upcoming Stephen King movie. Recalling how the cold played into all this, Glen Powell said:
I regretted agreeing to it, because I agreed to that scene in the summertime, and we shot that scene in February in Bulgaria on a rooftop. So being in a towel in front of a crew is one thing, but being in a towel in February in frigid Bulgaria, it’s a sight. [Laughs] It’s a real sight.
First of all, brrr. That sounds rough, even if you’re fully clothed. To do that and be wearing only a towel, that’d be so difficult. However, they did it, what we’ve seen of it looks great, and as Powell said, it made for “a real sight.”
You know, the Twisters star did say he called Tom Cruise to ask how to survive a movie like this, and now I see why that would have been so useful. He’s really going through it and fully committing to the action in The Running Man, and that seems to require a Mission: Impossible level of commitment.
It seems like it’s all going to pay off, though, because The Running Man looks action-packed and amazing. And you can see it, and Glen Powell doing an action scene in a towel, in theaters on November 14.