‘The Running Man’: Colman Domingo Says His New Game Show Host Villain Was Partly Inspired By Jerry Springer

This November we’ll be seeing writer/director Edgar Wright return to the world of action after his engergic romantic heist film “Baby Driver” proved that he has more than just comedic chops and is looking to double-down with a remake of “The Running Man” as the remake at Paramount is expected to be quite the event for action film junkies with the promise of extremely elaborate stunts.

The pic has two-time Oscar-nominee Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”) filling Richard Dawson‘s (a real television game show host recruited for the original 1987 film) shoes in the remake as a new, charismatic game show host Bobby Thompson (the Dawson role of Damon Killian now split between Domingo and Josh Brolin) and while speaking with Fandango at CinemaCinema in Las Vegas (alongside Wright, Brolin, and star Glen Powell) revealed that “The Jerry Springer Show” is where he was pulling inspiration from for his new iteration.

READ MORE: ‘The Running Man’: Glen Powell Says He Got “Full Blessing” From Arnold Schwarzenegger For Game Of Death Remake

“There were a bunch,” Domingo said when asked what TV/game show hosts inspired his new character. “Edgar [Wright] and I were talking about all the differences of game show hosts and TV hosts, period, of different shows…I remember the documentary [‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’] just landed, and I thought, ‘This is interesting.’ Someone who was just a guy with a role, and then he started to take off and started to feed into it as well and sort of bring out the worst in people in many ways. But also also felt like he was not complicit at the same time.

Domingo continued, “That’s interesting how he plays with the audience, how he gets the audience in the palm of his hand to the point, you know, yelling out ‘Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.’ Someone who wasn’t very well known but then made everyone believe he was, which was interesting. So there is a lot of inspiration, but there are a lot of hosts in Bobby [Thomspon].”

It’ll be quite fascinating to see the dynamic between Domingo’s Bobby Thompson and Brolin’s Dan Killian as the two are essentially the masterminds behind “The Running Man” game show, along with normalizing the gruesome nature of popularizing on-screen murder for entertainment.

Paramount has set “The Running Man” release date for November 7 and sees Powell playing Ben Richards, a regular man who is thrust into the world of this brutal game show hoping that he can earn some life-changing money to help his family.

The rest of the supporting cast features Michael Cera, Lee Pace, Katy O’Brian, William H. Macy, and Emilia Jones.

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You can watch Fandango’s full exchange below, which includes a little bit of friendly chirping between Brolin and Powell.