Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Glen Powell his blessing for The Running Man remake

Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Glen Powell his blessing for ‘The Running Man’ remake and the former ‘Expendables’ co-stars recently reconnected.

Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Glen Powell his blessing for ‘The Running Man’ remake.

Glen will star in Edgar Wright’s adaptation of author Stephen King’s 1982 novel of the same name, which was first brought to the big screen in 1987 with Schwarzenegger, 77, in the lead role and the veteran star was happy to pass on the baton to his ‘Expendables’ co-star.

Glen, 36, told PEOPLE: “Arnold gave us his blessing. Patrick Schwarzenegger is a great friend of mine and I asked Patrick if I could talk to Arnold and I hadn’t seen Arnold since we shot ‘Expendables’ in Bulgaria.

“Arnold gave us his full blessing and we get to give Arnold a very specific fun gift from the movie in a couple of weeks here. So I’m very excited to see him.”

Meanwhile, Wright previously revealed he cast Powell in ‘The Running Man’ because he wanted to use an actor “who hadn’t really done something like this before”.

In an interview with Empire magazine, the 50-year-old director said: “I felt it was important to see somebody who hadn’t really done something like this before.

“It’s similar to Bruce Willis, when he was still the guy from ‘Moonlighting’, before he did ‘Die Hard’, where that adds to the suspense. Can they make it?”

‘The Running Man’ follows the desperate Ben Richards (Powell) who signs on to participate in the TV game show ‘The Running Man’, where enemies of the state have to evade death at the hands of the game’s stalkers to try and win their freedom.

Wright vowed that his ‘Running Man’ film would be a faithful adaptation of King’s book and teased it would be a “very intense, dangerous road movie”.

He said: “One of the things about the book that I loved was the fact that Ben Richards is out in the world on his own, so it’s like the deadliest game of hide and seek.

“It does feel like making a road movie in a lot of ways: a very intense, dangerous road movie. Ben is moving through different environments and meeting different people as he tries to survive 30 days out in the wild.”