The following contains spoilers for Stephen King’s The Running Man novel.
The Running Man director, Edgar Wright, stated that there is a major Easter egg in the film involving one of its stars, Josh Brolin, who portrays the movie’s villain, Dan Killian. According to Wright, it was a nod to the actor’s family.
In an interview with ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan for The Running Man, the director revealed that Brolin wasn’t the only person in his family to take part in the film, his father, James Brolin, was in it, too. “Josh Brolin is not the only Brolin in this movie. By complete coincidence, his dad is in it as well,” he explained. Wright said that having two Brolins in The Running Man was completely by chance. In fact, James was selected for the film before Josh was even cast.
James makes an appearance in The Running Man through a clip of an old movie that he was in, Skyjacked. He portrayed the hijacker in the action thriller film. It wasn’t until after Josh’s casting that Wright connected the dots.
So we wrote that in. We got the clip cleared — and this was all before Josh Brolin was cast as Killian. And then when Josh Brolin was cast, I suddenly said to him, “Hey, your dad’s in the movie too,” because James Brolin plays the hijacker in Skyjacked.
Aside from the father and son unintentionally appearing in The Running Man together, the scene that Wright chose from Skyjacked was very carefully selected. The clip depicts James’ character holding up a plane with a grenade. The director picked that specific part of the film because he wanted to use it to foreshadow an event that will occur later on in the movie.
While the film has not been released to the public yet, the scene that Skyjacked is foreshadowing will be fairly obvious to viewers who have read the 1982 Stephen King novel of the same name. The main character, Ben Richards (who will be portrayed by Glen Powell), holds two people hostage on a plane at the end of the novel before the plane ultimately crashes and kills him.
There’s a clip of a film called Skyjacked, which we had written into the script because we had this idea that when he’s in Molly, played by William H. Macy, he’s in his basement, he’s a black marketeer, and there are some old cathode ray TVs playing an old film.
Me and Michael Bacall had this idea: What if they’re watching a film that could serve as a setup or foreshadowing later? So there’s this movie called Skyjacked, and I remember we were talking about airport films, and I said to Michael, “Oh, there’s this film called Skyjacked where somebody holds up a plane with a grenade.”
The Running Man will be released in theaters on November 14, 2025.