Glen Powell blames corporate merger for The Running Man flopping

Glen Powell has blamed a corporate merger for his 2025 action movie The Running Man bombing at the box office.

In Edgar Wright's dystopian action film, the second adaptation of Stephen King's novel, Powell played a contestant in a deadly televised competition called The Running Man.

Expectations were high, but the film failed to deliver at the box office, taking only $69 million (£52 million) worldwide from a $110 million (£83 million) budget.

Addressing its performance in an interview with Esquire, Powell explained, "They let go of an entire marketing department a month before our movie came out in the middle of a merger," referring to the studio Paramount.

The Twisters star admitted he left the set "broken, physically and emotionally", particularly as he forged ahead with filming despite a hand injury.

Powell revealed he was hospitalised in Bulgaria after he ruptured the tendon in his hand during a fight sequence. He discovered that the tissue had been completely severed and he had a septic infection, so he underwent surgery right away.

Instead of resting, the team wrote in the need for his character to have bandages, and he filmed the very next day, scaling an exterior wall in "negative 10 degree weather with one arm" with only a towel around his waist.

Explaining why he was so focused on not delaying production, Powell said, "Running Man had a release date, and I had the J. J. Abrams movie on deck," referring to his upcoming fantasy film The Great Beyond.

Elsewhere in the interview, the Top Gun: Maverick star also addressed the performance of his 2026 black comedy How to Make a Killing, which came and went without much attention.

"There were a lot of issues with that," he shared. "There just was not enough time to do it properly. I look back on that one as an example of going, You know what, there's no rush."

In addition to The Great Beyond, Powell will also star in Judd Apatow's comedy The Comeback King next year.