Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i Empire

THE FIRST JURASSIC trilogy ended in 2001 with the spectacle of Pteranodons soaring alongside a helicopter. The second ended in 2022 with two Sinoceratops marching with a herd of elephants in Africa. Over six blockbuster movies, we’ve had a whole heap of oohing, aahing, running and screaming: you’d be forgiven for thinking that at this point Hollywood must be fresh out of dinosaur juice. But cinema finds a way. And a new scientist has arrived to bring the franchise back from extinction, tinkering with the formula, splicing things together and adding his own ingredients (to the best of our knowledge, these do not include frog DNA). Gareth Edwards, a filmmaker who has more experience with monsters than Van Helsing, is the man behind Jurassic World Rebirth. He has dropped in…

The fossil records are clear: Empire has always been dino-obsessed. Back in 1993, we went full Jurassic, reporting on the original film’s box-office draw (“shattered more records than a frustrated Radio One DJ”, we noted); recognising early the film’s greatness in a five-star review (“This, for once, is a blockbuster deserving of the name”); and we even visited the set, witnessing a Velociraptor scuttle past the camera. Prophetically, Steven Spielberg recognised how the film’s ground-breaking CGI heralded a sea-change for cinema. “I don’t think we can ring the death-knell on [practical effects],” he told us. “But when the time comes, that’s a day I will mourn. And that day is coming. I'll move into the technology, because that technique will be the only way filmmakers with big imaginations will be…

IDRIS ELBA AND John Cena had some unresolved business. On the final day of shooting 2021’s The Suicide Squad, Elba had a proposition for his co-star: “I said, ‘John, seriously, I want to work with you again,’” Elba recalls. Cena wholeheartedly agreed. As Bloodsport and Peacemaker respectively, their characters had a combative rivalry fuelled by petty upmanship — an infectiously fun dynamic they didn’t want to leave behind. Cue Heads Of State, a political action-comedy from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller that builds on the natural chemistry Cena and Elba had discovered on The Suicide Squad. In fact, their experience on the set of James Gunn’s film directly informed their characters. Earlier iterations of the script had a more serious tone, but the pair considered lightening up the story with an…

ON-STAGE COMEDY can feel like life-or-death stuff to the people performing it; hence the terms “killing” or “destroying” being bandied around freely on the stand-up scene. But what if improv comics were dropped into a situation in which a poor ad-lib could result in their literal demise? Such is the premise of new comedy Deep Cover, in which improv teacher Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), plus two of her less talented students — shy Hugh (Nick Mohammed) and preening Method actor Marlon (Orlando Bloom) — are recruited by the police to infiltrate a London gang. We dialled up the three stars on Zoom and asked, “Yes… and?” Had the three of you crossed paths before this film? Nick Mohammed: No, we never had. I remember there was a rumour that you…

TOM CRUISE MAKES me feel young. Or rather, watching Tom Cruise movies tricks me into feeling like I’ve not grown older. There he was with his mile-wide grin, fighting monsters (in Legend) and flying jets (in Top Gun) when I was just a teenager. And here he still is, more-or-less doing the same thing (exactly the same thing, in the case of Top Gun: Maverick) decades later, despite being in his early sixties. In fact, he’s more active than ever: clinging to planes and riding motorbikes off cliffs, mostly as the seemingly invincible Ethan Hunt in the 29-year-old Mission: Impossible series. It’s like time hasn’t passed for Tom Cruise, so I feel like time hasn’t passed for me, either. Until I remember what I miss about him. Don’t get me…

WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE KING OF KINGS? While A Minecraft Movie dominated the Easter-holiday box office, this CG-animated Christian film took the number-two spot in the US, hauling in $19.3 million during its opening weekend — almost $5 million more than the Book of Exodus-based The Prince Of Egypt back in 1998, making it the biggest-ever opening for a faith-based animated movie (not adjusting for inflation). WHAT’S IT ACTUALLY ABOUT? The life of Jesus (Oscar Isaac), but with a twist: it’s all narrated/witnessed by Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh), who’s trying to convince his son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) that the New Testament is a better story than the legend of King Arthur. This is because it’s based on Dickens’ The Life Of Our Lord, which he wrote for his…

OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / EPISODES VIEWED 12 OF 12 SHOWRUNNER Tony Gilroy CAST Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Denise Gough, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly PLOT A year after the riot on Ferrix, Cassian Andor (Luna) is now a crucial member of the rebellion — as the Empire moves towards unleashing the Death Star. WHEN THE FIRST season of Andor arrived, it blew away Star Wars newbies and long-time fans alike. Focusing on an unexplored character from a spin-off prequel, it surpassed all expectations, tracking the first half of Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) radicalisation from street thief to full-blown revolutionary. This second season charts the second half, between Cassian joining the ranks of Luthen Rael’s (Stellan Skarsgård) network of rebels and the events of 2016’s Rogue One — and despite us knowing…

OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 7 OF 9 SHOWRUNNER Jonathan Tropper CAST Jon Hamm, Olivia Munn, Amanda Peet, Mark Tallman Following a recent divorce, hedge-fund manager Andrew ‘Coop’ Cooper (Jon Hamm) is fired; to keep his family living in the manner they’ve grown accustomed to, Coop resorts to stealing from his rich neighbours. In Hamm’s first starring TV role since Mad Men, the actor remains rugged and charming, and watching him rip off rich guys while barely masking his own pain is a delight. The series starts slow, but when Coop does finally start stealing from the rich — a selfish Robin Hood of sorts — momentum builds, and so does the tension. Hamm is having the time of his life here in a somewhat thrilling, occasionally dull…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 95 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher Landon CAST Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Jacob Robinson, Reed Diamond PLOT A first date for widowed mother Violet (Fahy) is derailed by sinister messages from a stranger threatening to kill her family. GREAT IDEAS CAN strike in the strangest of circumstances. In the case of Drop, it came when Olivia Sui, girlfriend of the film’s executive producer Sam Lerner, received mysterious Shrek memes (of all things) through AirDrop, Apple’s close-proximity file-sharing feature. Swap ogre memes for murder threats and you have director Christopher Landon’s ridiculously fun tech thriller, which stretches its premise to absurd heights befitting of its inspiration. It starts out innocently enough. Violet (Meghann Fahy) has been out of the dating game for so long that…

OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR James Hawes CAST Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, Julianne Nicholson This fine but forgettable espionage-thriller sees Rami Malek’s introverted CIA techie Charlie Heller defy his superiors and go on a one-man mission to hunt for his wife’s killers. Heller’s only particular set of skills are his intelligence and resourcefulness, a gambit that Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli’s script and director James Hawes get a lot of mileage from as he goes after his targets with carefully planned traps rather than bullets. But the slow-burn storytelling never quite hits that extra gear, and the stacked supporting cast is underutilised. Still, while he can be overly stiff and one-note, Malek is at least convincing as an unlikely, easy-to-root-for hero stepping out of…

OUT NOW / 12A / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Jake Schreier CAST Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Lewis Pullman, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus PLOT After being hired by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Louis-Dreyfus), a group of mercenaries find themselves teaming up. IF THE AVENGERS are Marvel’s A-team, the Thunderbolts feel a little like the B-team. In the comics, they were a team of anti-heroes who filled the gap when the Avengers were all killed; in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they’re a ragtag band of Suicide Squad-esque mercs, cobbled together in a series of post-credit stings by the mysterious Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, going full Evil Veep), who is stepping into a (super)power vacuum with dark designs. Except this superhero team-up is sort of self-assembled, IKEA-style, as…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 132 MINS DIRECTOR Gavin O’Connor CAST Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, J.K. Simmons PLOT When private eye King (Simmons) is murdered, his accountant/assassin associate Christian Wolff (Affleck) takes over his last case. GAVIN O’CONNOR’S THE ACCOUNTANT (2016), written by Bill Dubuque, introduced Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck): a buttoned-down number-cruncher with a sideline as a vigilante avenger. It was a big enough hit for ‘Untitled Accountant Sequel’ to go immediately into development but it’s taken nearly a decade for that project to get off the back burner. Given how long it’s been, it’s an accomplishment that O’Connor and Dubuque call in so many of the original cast — the only absentee is Anna Kendrick, the civilian hero last time out — though…

“This,” beams Jonathan Bailey, “is about as Jurassic as it gets!” It is late September 2024, a few hours after sunset, and Empire has joined the actor on the backlot of Sky Studios Elstree, where Jurassic World Rebirth is rounding off a full-pelt summer-long shoot. Bailey’s not wrong. We are hit with an overwhelming sense of familiarity. There are the tall wire-fences signposted, “Danger: 10,000 Volts”, which stand in front of thick, tropical foliage. There’s the presence of an electric Jeep which, despite a new paint job, bears that classic Rex-skeleton logo. And, most pertinently, there are the carnivorous dinosaurs. Tonight, says Bailey with a grin, “the Raptors are out”. The cameras roll and, in character as intrepid paleontologist Henry Loomis, the bespectacled actor steps forward intently. He’s grimed-up and…

HAL 9000 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 1968 The original AI-hole. When catty computer HAL isn’t murdering his passengers, he’s patronising them in an infuriatingly calm pass-agg tone. Having killed his crewmates, he even has the nerve to tell Dr Bowman, “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress-pill and think things over.” Insufferable. THE GUNSLINGER WESTWORLD 1973 Effectively programmed to irritate people into violence, Yul Brynner’s pistol-toting robo-wrong’un hangs around the Westworld saloon wearing a ten-gallon hat and a smirk, spilling punters’ pints until they challenge him to a duel. He becomes significantly more douchey when he goes rogue and starts actively killing paying customers. THE FEMBOTS AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY 1997 A futuristic twist on the sirens from Homer’s Odyssey, these seductive cyborgs lure men in…

Empire is in the arena. A towering one at that. Below us, etched deep in the dirt, are giant, ominous scratch-marks. Surrounding us are huge stone walls. This building is designed for one thing: dragon-wrangling. The bricks are scorched, signatures of the same beasts whose talons have left impressive grooves in the ground. It’s March 2024, on an overcast day in Belfast, two months into the How To Train Your Dragon shoot, and to all intents and purposes, we’re standing in a living, breathing, battle-beaten Berk — the franchise’s fictional Viking town. Beyond the arena lies a full-scale line-up of huts where the Vikings live, clustered around a glittering, intricate mosaic. A few weeks earlier, real fish had been kept in one of the huts, adding a potent layer of…

APPROPRIATELY, BEING THAT Sean Baker’s Anora is a fairy tale of sorts, it has been for the filmmaker — and its tinsel-haired star, Mikey Madison — too. With a mere $6 million budget, the bitingly comedic drama, about a young sex-worker caught up in a frantic battle of wills (and henchmen) after marrying the son of a Russian oligarch, stormed the awards circuit. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Madison bagged a BAFTA, and then it took home five Oscars — one for Madison, and four with Baker’s name on them, including Best Director and Best Picture, a record number of wins for one person for an individual film. Now that’s a happy ending. Anora is Baker’s eighth film, and all are uniquely his, each boasting vibrancy, authenticity and…

ACCORDING TO THE documentary Suzzanna: Queen Of Black Magic, 60 per cent of Indonesian films in the 1980s were horror. Regimes and fashions have changed in the 17,500-island archipelago since then, but horror is still a huge part of a busy national cinema. In the video-tape era, a few Indonesian items like the truly strange Lady Terminator and muscleman epic The Warrior circulated in English dubs and grotty transfers. Only now are we seeing quality international releases for 1980s highlights alongside the best contemporary work. Indonesian horror takes cues from Western and Japanese (even Bollywood) traditions but is informed by the complex religious-ethnic makeup of the nation. A host of local ghosts, monsters, gods, beliefs and creatures (often reptilian) feature in place of vampires, werewolves and demons. Islam often takes…

DAN JOLIN WENT ON THE SET OF JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH “After a lifetime of eagerly watching dinosaurs, I finally got to walk with some… Well, sort of: I watched some people wearing Velociraptor hats stalk Scarlett Johansson and Jonny Bailey. But it was still thrilling – especially with Gareth Edwards behind the camera, living his own childhood dream.” JOANNA MORAN FLEW TO LA FOR A PHOTOSHOOT WITH SYDNEY SWEENEY “One cold, crisp morning in LA (yes, they happen!) we headed to a studio in Culver City with Sydney, one of the most exciting young actors around, but with a classic Hollywood charm that we wanted to lean into. And who better than LA photography legend Art Streiber to absolutely nail the old-school glamour?” CHRIS HEWITT HOSTED A Q&A WITH DIRECTOR…

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IT’S NO SMALL task filling the boots of a titanium titan like Iron Man. So when Dominique Thorne — star of the upcoming series Ironheart — got the seal of approval from the man himself, it was a weight off. “Robert Downey Jr and I spoke just after we wrapped, and he shared some very lovely words about my journey,” she tells Empire. “He told me how excited he was and that he’s rooting for it, too. I literally got two thumbs up. It’s really reassuring to know you’re not embarrassing Iron Man.” Of course Riri Williams — the Chicago-born MIT student-turned-techy-superhero — is carving her own path away from Marvel’s fallen Iron giant as well. Having made her MCU debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, where her ace suit-building…

“IT WAS VERY much like that scene in Apocalypse Now.” Isaac Mahaffey, an American filmmaker and YouTuber, is describing the energy at an opening-day screening of A Minecraft Movie. It was 5.30pm on Friday 4 April, and middle school had just let out when he headed down to his local AMC in Austin, Texas. Over the course of the film, the cinema descended into pandemonium: 11-to-13-year-olds were jumping on seats, popcorn flying through the air as familiar characters and lingo appeared on screen. During the end credits, smaller kids took to the aisles dancing, Footloose-style. It was at this point that a child turned to Mahaffey and, similar to Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard in the Vietnam war epic, asked who was in charge. “I hadn’t ever seen a movie theatre…

IT WAS A triumphant moment for anyone who’s ever thrown themselves off a flaming building or through a glass window in the name of movie-making. After decades of campaigning, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences announced in April that a Best Stunt Design category will be added to the Oscars. The award will crash the ceremony of the 100th Academy Awards, in 2028, which will honour films released in 2027. “It’s cool,” says Chad Stahelski, who worked as martial-arts stunt co-ordinator on the original Matrix trilogy before burly-brawling his way to the director’s chair for all four chapters of the John Wick saga. “It’s nice to be acknowledged. It’s been talked about for years now. I’ve been pretty involved since John Wick 4 came out.” The campaign dates…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / CERT TBC / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Gareth Evans CAST Tom Hardy, Jessie Mei Li, Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, Luis Guzmán, Quelin Sepulveda PLOT Anguished cop Walker (Hardy) must find the son of politician Beaumont (Whitaker) while atoning for his past amid the violent underbelly of his city. THERE’S A VITALNESS to Gareth Evans’ filmmaking that is yet to lose momentum. First felt in 2011’s The Raid, when the film’s compact premise allowed for dizzyingly kinetic fight sequences that all but pinned you to your seat, the writer-director has continued to mine his boundless knowledge of the heroic bloodshed genre in order to fuse frenzied violence with themes of morality. HAVOC is an extension of his small yet combustible oeuvre. Set over the Christmas period, we find…

OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Ryan Coogler CAST Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O’Connell PLOT Twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Jordan) return to the Jim Crow South to open a juke joint — but vampires crash their opening night. WE’VE SEEN VAMPIRES as a metaphor for sin, sex and even Mormonism. Now Ryan Coogler bring us vampires as colonialists, forever lustful for the divine spark in others. The result is very close to a Deep South vampire musical, and if that sounds weird, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who have returned after years of soldiering and running with gangsters to run a juke joint. They swagger around, stirring up excitement…

OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 6 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Charlie Brooker CAST Rashida Jones, Issa Rae, Emma Corrin, Paul Giamatti, Cristin Milioti, Peter Capaldi PLOT Six more tales of near-future tech dystopia. An actor is transported into a classic movie; a woman is gaslit by a former classmate; and a loner fosters cute digital creatures. CHARLIE BROOKER ONCE worried that Black Mirror, his long-running, darkly dystopian tech-noir anthology series, would end up being “the show about consciousness being uploaded into a little disc”. Now back with a seventh season, he has perhaps made peace with that description. There is plenty of familiar-but-different ground covered here, suggesting a new sense of confidence — a comfort in its own identity. That can be seen in the show’s first sequel episode, ‘USS…

OUT 30 MAY / CERT 12A / 100 MINS DIRECTOR James Griffiths CAST Tom Basden, Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Sian Clifford PLOT Wealthy loner Charles Heath (Key) hires disbanded folk duo McGwyer (Basden) and Mortimer (Mulligan) for a gig. The catch? Only one of the singers knows it’s a reunion. THE BALLAD OF Wallis Island begins with big-in-the-aughts folk singer Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) travelling by boat to a (fictional) Welsh island to play a private gig. Embellishing this premise from his 2007 BAFTA-nominated short, James Griffiths’ small-scale treat, written by stars Basden (Plebs, After Life) and Tim Key (Alan Partridge’s lackey Sidekick Simon), finds a sweet spot between heart and humour that sensitively explores love, loss and the difficulty in reconciling with the past, without ever skimping on great…

OUT 9 MAY / CERT 15 / 98 MINS DIRECTOR Nadia Conners CAST Elizabeth Reaser, Walton Goggins, Lois Smith, Pedro Pascal, Rufus Sewell, Eva De Dominici PLOT Under-strain Hollywood couple Sammy (Goggins) and Rose (Reaser) throw a party that’s crashed by two uninvited guests (Smith, Pascal). Chaos ensues. ‘WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW’ goes the old adage, and Hollywood scribes have long dipped their sharp quills into the inky working methods and attitudes of their own industry. And it’s not about to stop anytime soon — as Hollywood continues to navigate the seismic changes of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, streaming platforms, the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike, and just as Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ series The Studio gears up for its finale, we now have Nadia Conners’ heartfelt comedy-drama The Uninvited…

LET’S SET A SCENE. Let’s say you’re the producer of two extremely successful Superman movies, with a third on the way. Let’s say you’re looking to expand the Superman cinematic universe with another superhero. Ah, Supergirl! An inspired choice and, frankly, ahead of its time. And you’ll cast it with a likeable, wide-eyed unknown as the title character, just like 1978’s Superman. Dolly Parton, you think, would be great as the villain. Oh — she doesn’t want to do it. Let’s get a moustache-twirling Faye Dunaway! Peter Cook as her smothered-in-wearied-sarcasm warlock-boyfriend called… Nigel? Perfect. While we’re at it, let’s just cast the rest of the film with a smorgasbord of screen legends who all seem to be acting in their own private movie. Peter O’Toole wants to ad lib…

“ANOTHER SPIDER-MAN movie? Ugh!” If that was your reaction upon hearing the announcement, back in 2015, that Sony was making Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, you could be forgiven. And you weren’t alone. Just the year before, in 2014, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — the fifth live-action Spider-Man movie in just 12 years — had proved to be anything but. The last thing the world needed now, it seemed, was a new webslinger adventure. Never mind that it was an animated movie, or that the entirely excellent Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the kings of the project that should not work but somehow does, were behind it. Our collective Spidey-Sense started tingling. And was wrong. Very wrong. When Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse finally debuted on the big screen three years later,…

IT’S BEEN A while since Cameron Crowe has graced the big screen — his last movie as director, Aloha, was ten years ago. But if Scott Beck and Bryan Woods had had their druthers, Heretic would have marked Crowe’s return. But this time, in front of the camera. Not as the film’s villain, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant had that one sewn up), but as a Mormon, going door to door. “Cameron read a draft of the script,” says Beck. “We were trying to coerce him into doing a small cameo, because when he was making Jerry Maguire, he originally wanted to get Billy Wilder to do a role.” But, just as Wilder said no, so too did Crowe. “He was very, very kind about declining, and not wanting to put…

1 Kermit The Frog first appeared in 1955 on a TV show created by Jim Henson. What was that series called? 2 Twenty years later, in 1975, Muppets appeared in the debut episode of which still-running American comedy show? 3 Dr Teeth is frontman of The Electric Mayhem. Name the other five band members. Bonus point if you do a drum solo while you answer. 4 Quentin Tarantino cameos in a 2005 Muppets TV movie. What’s the film’s title? 5 The Muppets have appeared at the Oscars but criminally won only one — for Best Original Song in 2012. Who wrote the song and what was it called? 6 Christopher Nolan once revealed to Empire that his favourite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf. Which of that iconic duo is the…

LETTER OF THE MONTH SHARK TALE So, Jaws’ 50th anniversary [Cover story, issue #440]. When I was at primary school I had a teacher, Mrs Major, who had family living in America, and every year in the summer holidays she would go and visit them. One year, she came back and showed us the photos she’d taken while visiting Martha’s Vineyard of a film crew and a rubber shark on the beach on a rig/trailer. My mind was blown when Jaws was released! I always wonder what happened to those photos and if her family realised what a piece of cinematic history they were. PETER HANNIS, VIA EMAIL A story worthy of the USS Indianapolis! For being an early adopter of our favourite bad fish, have a Picturehouse membership, on…

R2-D2. MARVIN. BAYMAX. The Tin Man. Johnny 5. WALL • E. Paulie’s pal in Rocky IV. Cinema history is littered with iconically cute robots; endearing droids practically pre-programmed to be adorable. A new entrant hopes to join their metallic ranks this summer, in Marvel’s upcoming retro-futuristic romp The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Everyone, say hello to H.E.R.B.I.E. “He’s absolutely as important and as alive as any other member of the cast,” insists the film’s director Matt Shakman, entirely seriously. “He’s sometimes a slightly put-upon robot, but he is definitely a member of the family. He’s just so charming and adorable.” This is not an exaggeration: H.E.R.B.I.E. was at one point a full, card-carrying member of the Fantastic Four superhero team line-up. Due to thrillingly dry copyright reasons, the 1978 Hanna-Barbera…

THE SWING Wilson had two years of professional golf lessons to convince as the one-time Ryder Cup star who’s traded putting for patter, smooth-talking punters into buying expensive equipment at a club. “My dad was a good golfer and both my brothers played, but I didn’t learn,” he says. “My excuse was I was left-handed and they only had righty clubs.” He studied golf legends (“I love Seve Ballesteros… such a great swashbuckler”) and watched 1996 sports romance Tin Cup (“Costner had a good swing”), but mainly he practised, practised, practised. In secret. “I went out to play with Luke [Wilson, his brother]. I was out-driving him. He was like, ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe this. I thought it was going to be like taking some kid and watching him…

THE JOHN WICK franchise is rich with mythology. Amid all the bullets and broken bones there’s an all-powerful High Table, and a building full of tattooed ‘Accountants’. In Ballerina — a new, Ana de Armas-fronted chapter in the story — a significant corner of the Wick-iverse is explored: Ruska Roma, the dancer-fronted assassin academy where Keanu Reeves’ antihero Baba Yaga was born. This time we meet Eve Macarro (de Armas), a recent Ruska Roma graduate with a similar appetite for revenge. Here, she and director Len Wiseman tell Empire how they put their own spin on the wild Wick formula. How did you first start working together on Ballerina? Len Wiseman: Ana, I came to you when we were more in the development phase. We started to elaborate on [the…

ALPHA ALEX GODFREY, FEATURES EDITOR After the very brutal one-two punch of Raw and Titane, and following her Palme d’Or win for the latter, Julia Ducournau is back with Alpha. Starring Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim and newcomer Mélissa Boros, it swirls around an 11-year-old girl in the 1980s, against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and the grassroots political group ACT UP. Ducournau never holds back, pushing boundaries, smashing barriers, and this is said to be a hugely personal film for her, so steel yourself. I can’t wait. ELEANOR THE GREAT BETH WEBB, NEWS EDITOR Ninety-five-year-old June Squibb takes to the Croisette for the first time since 2013’s Nebraska premiere, this time as the star of Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut. If Squibb’s leading role in last year’s Thelma didn’t charm…

1990: FURRY-OUS BEGINNINGS The New Yorker publishes Ian Frazier’s Coyote v. Acme — a short story presented as court transcripts from an imagined legal dispute between bungling Looney Tunes antagonist Wile E. Coyote and Acme Corporation, the company that supplies his permanently backfiring booby traps. A masterclass in deadpan humour, the piece contains such excellent lines as, “Mr Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen’s Compensation.” 2018-’22: LIGHTS, CAMERA, LEGAL ACTION Nearly three decades later, production gets underway at Warner Bros. on Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action/animated hybrid film based on Frazier’s story. Produced by James Gunn, directed by Dave Green and written by May December scribe Samy Burch, Will Forte is cast as Coyote’s lawyer, Kevin Avery, who’s facing off against his tough-guy former boss Buddy Crane…

FORTNITE Perhaps the most-discussed contender is this multiplayer battle royale with seemingly endless character options. An IP mash-up which allows you to play as everyone from Homer Simpson to John Wick, it could inspire a Ready Player One-style adaptation. ROBLOX Roblox allows users to create their own games for other users to play (there are 50 million on the platform). With its boxy animated characters and emphasis on its interactive elements for kids, this could be a LEGO Movie-style outing for pint-sized Chicken-Jockey enthusiasts. STARDEW VALLEY The stakes are hardly high in this simulation game: users inherit an farm and must restore it to order. It may sound like the premise of a Ghibli animation, but throw combat-training and cave-monsters into the mix and you could have a smattering of…

‘WHY YOU HERE/BEFORE THE SUN WENT DOWN’ LUDWIG GÖRANSSON SINNERS Göransson’s beautiful blues guitar has a hint of eeriness before it gives way to Miles Caton’s soaring vocal riffs. Press play and welcome it in. ‘MORNING EVENING’ TOM BASDEN AND CAREY MULLIGAN THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND This heartwarming British comedy casts Basden and Mulligan as a dream indie-folk duo. Find them in their element in this harmonious, guitar-led ode to love lost. ‘ICE CUBE IS GONE’ ANTONIO SÁNCHEZ THE STUDIO A jazzy fusion of frantic percussion and lightning-quick piano: the perfect accompaniment to the fast-paced world of Hollywood hustling explored in Seth Rogen’s comedy series. ‘I FEEL ALIVE’ JACK BLACK A MINECRAFT MOVIE The Tenacious D frontman reunites with Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl to take us back to the…

OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 112 MINS DIRECTOR Peter Cattaneo CAST Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Björn Gustafsson, Vivian El Jaber Peter Cattaneo’s new film offers a little more drama and nuance than you might fear from the usual whimsical, British, feel-good film territory. Steve Coogan plays Tom Michell, an English teacher who in 1976 takes up a role at a boarding school in Argentina, where a military coup — and the accidental adoption of a penguin — upend his life. So it’s Dead Poets Society meets I’m Still Here meets… Happy Feet? There is some heft to what might otherwise have been weightless frippery, even if it also necessitates some wild tonal swerves. Still, the film is thankfully sharper and less cute than it initially appears. If you do…

OUT NOW (SKY/NOW) / EPISODES VIEWED 7 OF 7 SHOWRUNNERS Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann CAST Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Isabela Merced, Kaitlyn Dever, Gabriel Luna, Rutina Wesley PLOT In post-apocalyptic America, Joel (Pascal) and Ellie (Ramsey) are now living quietly. But the arrival of Abby (Dever) threatens their peace. IF THERE WAS ever even a ‘video-game curse’ — the claim that games could never be successfully adapted into film and television — then The Last Of Us definitively disproved it. The 2023 television series was a masterclass in adaptation, faithfully matching (and in some case besting) the groundbreaking 2013 game; in (re)telling the story of the global fungus-based pandemic — released in the midst of an actual pandemic — showrunners Craig Mazin and original game writer Neil Druckmann forged something…

OUT NOW / CERT PG / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Jared Hess CAST Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge, Jemaine Clement Thanks to The LEGO Movie and Barbie, the bar for kiddie-brand-exploiting cinema has risen unexpectedly high. A Minecraft Movie deals with that by not even bothering to try. This isn’t to say it’s lacking in energy. It is loud in all senses — from the hideous hot pink of Jason Momoa’s tasselled leather jacket to the over-emphatic, pantomimey delivery of every single Jack Black line — and rammed with garish, square-ish action. But in terms of story and character, it really can’t be arsed. Its protagonists are weary archetypes: the bro-dude moron (Momoa), the nerdy-but-creative kid (Sebastian Hansen), Jack Black (er, Jack Black)… It may have stormed the box office,…

OUT 30 MAY / CERT 12A / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Marianne Elliott CAST Gillian Anderson, Jason Isaacs, James Lance PLOT Recently made homeless, Ray (Anderson) and Moth (Isaacs) embark on a 600-mile walk around the Cornish coastline. HOT ON THE heels of last year’s The Outrun (or, rather, trudging along behind it with blistered feet) comes The Salt Path, another adaptation of a memoir (by Raynor Winn, published in 2018) about the healing power of nature, featuring craggy coastlines and encounters with seals. Two examples don’t make a trend, but could it be that studios have identified ‘bestselling nature-writing-slash-memoir’ as a new kind of exportable British intellectual property? While on paper this true story of a middle-aged couple facing homelessness and a debilitating disease embarking on a trek along the…

DEATH OF A UNICORN FILM “Yet another Rich People Are Bad film, comprised of White-Lotus-reject characters. For a scathing satire of late-stage capitalism, your targets must be laser-focused and your arguments refreshingly original; this has neither.” JOHN NUGENT G20 FILM “It is nonsense, and subject to the usual pitfalls of streaming actioners. But it delivers what it sets out to: sofaplex thrills that’ll go down easy on a Friday night, in which the President snaps a mercenary’s neck with a machine gun. She’s got our vote.” BEN TRAVIS DOCTOR WHO: ‘THE ROBOT REVOLUTION’ TV “With all of time and space as its playground, Who can sometimes feel a little weightless and whimsical, inconsequential even. But for those who stick around, there is meat to be found on the bones of…

Allison Williams can’t quite put her finger on the moment when she knew that M3GAN — the all-singing, all-dancing, all-slaying doll who lent her name to the movie of the same name — had become a bona fide icon. It might have been after the launch of the movie’s trailer, in October 2022. “People were making memes about her already,” Williams remembers. Or maybe it was after the movie came out in January 2023, and quickly became one of Blumhouse’s biggest hits, with a worldwide gross of $180 million (from a $12 million budget). Maybe it was the moment Williams — who starred as Gemma, the well-intentioned creator of M3GAN — appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show and was interviewed by the host in full M3GAN costume. (“Drew Barrymore crawling…

1 SATURDAY NIGHT (OUT NOW, DVD/BR/DIGITAL) Jason Reitman’s breathless, real-time, printthe-legend version of what happened in the 90 minutes before the launch of the first episode of Saturday Night Live is enormously entertaining, with an excellent ensemble cast breathing sparky life into comedy icons. 2 SEPTEMBER 5 (OUT NOW, DVD/BR/DIGITAL) An interesting companion piece to Spielberg’s Munich and Kevin Macdonald’s documentary One Day In September, Tim Fehlbaum’s movie tells the story of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics from the POV of the sports journalists covering the story. It would make for an interesting double bill with Saturday Night: tonally wildly different, but the same rough energy, and one heck of a cast. 3 JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY (OUT 19 MAY, 4K BR)…