Powell’s hand injury on ‘The Running Man’ quickly turned into a septic infection while he filmed in Bulgaria

NEED TO KNOW

• Glen Powell opened up about a hand injury he sustained on the set of The Running Man that required him to have emergency surgery in Bulgaria
• Powell’s The Running Man was considered an underperformer at the box office when it hit theaters in November 2025
• The actor said he finished the film “broken, physically and emotionally” after the difficult shoot

Glen Powell is sharing new information about a hand injury he sustained while filming The Running Man that could have turned scary quickly.

Powell, 37, sat down with Esquire for a profile published Wednesday, Oct. 7 as he prepares his next movie, the Judd Apatow comedy The Comeback King. The actor starred in a November 2025 action film titled The Running Man, a remake of Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s 1987 movie of the same name and an adaptation of Stephen King‘s original novel.

Powell told the outlet that while he was filming in Bulgaria, he ruptured a tendon in his hand while filming a scene in which his character is stabbed in the hand. The injury came even though the production used a prop knife with a retractable blade to fake the stabbing, and Powell told Esquire he initially did not realize he was injured and was intent on not delaying filming, considering that he was already scheduled to film a movie with J.J. Abrams after The Running Man wrapped.

As Esquire reported, Powell’s hand swelled to the point where he went to an emergency room in Bulgaria, where he was also diagnosed with a septic infection and needed emergency surgery. “This is the real deal, you could wake up without a hand,” he said doctors told him in the hospital.

After the surgery — with his hand intact — Powell returned to The Running Man‘s set with a bandaged hand that was written into the script. He filmed a sequence that required him to climb around the facade of a building in “negative 10 degree weather with one arm” while wearing only a bath towel, all the while he was told to keep his injured hand dry, warm and rested.

In The Running Man, Powell starred as a man living in a dystopian, near-future United States who enters a dangerous and popular televised game show in which he can win as much as $1 billion if he survives for 30 days while being hunted down by anyone in the country. “I left that movie broken, physically and emotionally,” he recalled. The experience made him wonder, “Do you keep sprinting?” in theme with The Running Man‘s title.

The Running Man, which was directed by Edgar Wright, was considered a disappointment at the box office. Powell told Esquire that he blamed the movie’s struggles financially on studio Paramount’s decision to lay off “an entire marketing department a month before our movie came out.” He also said his February movie How to Make a Killing was released despite having “a lot of issues” without enough time to fix, and said that the weight of his various recent projects grew heavy on him.

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“I was not living in the here and now,” Powell said of his recent film experiences. He recalled that his mother and sisters told him they worried he was “losing a little bit of that magic” and advised him to create some boundaries between himself and his professional obligations.

Powell’s upcoming projects also include The Great Beyond, his collaboration with director Abrams, 66, which he described as “the exact thing I needed at that moment in my life.” That movie is scheduled to release in October 2027. He also has films with Ron Howard and Richard Linklater in the works, and appears to be clued in to some degree on Tom Cruise’s plans for a third Top Gun.

“I know general brushstrokes of a story,” Powell said. “I haven’t read anything.” He also added that Cruise, 64, is “not going to do it unless he thinks it can beat Maverick.” “Hopefully I’m not the age of Maverick in Maverick by the time I make it,” Powell said.

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