Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Empire

1 The show is based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 techno-thriller, in which a theme park full of robot cowboys goes awry. Executive producer JJ Abrams met with Crichton in the ’90s about a possible film remake. That fell through, but Abrams kept pondering the concept’s potential. Eventually he turned to Jonathan Nolan and Nolan’s wife Lisa Joy to oversee this series for HBO. “There were more ideas to unpack than you had room for in a film,” says Nolan, who has figured out a multi-season plan. 2 While it’s still a Western/sci-fi mash-up, don’t expect this to hit the same beats as the ’73 film. “I’ve always felt in adaptation you have to be a bit of a heretic,” Nolan explains. “What we keep is the brilliant, subversive idea of…

FOR HIS FIRST cinema release, Louis Theroux has scored an impressive coup: Tom Cruise! Sort of. In My Scientology Movie — Theroux’s attempt to unpick the mysterious billion-dollar religion founded by science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard — the church’s highest-profile member is in fact played by actor Rob Alter, hired by Theroux to re-enact scenes described by ex-Scientologists. “Which makes sense when you think about it,” Theroux explains. “He’s the most famous actor in the world. In the same way that Scientology uses the profile of Tom Cruise to propagate its worldview, using the Hollywood system to generate interest, we’re doing what they do. It’s tantalising.” The filmmakers did invite the real Tom Cruise to appear but, “He politely declined.” Theroux has been making documentaries for nearly two decades and…

YES JONATHAN PILE DEPUTY EDITOR THERE’S A POPULAR narrative currently doing the rounds in the Empire office (mostly peddled by James Dyer), and it’s this: that I didn’t like Netflix’s Stranger Things. While it’s true I didn’t think it was perfect, I watched all eight episodes in a weekend, gave it three stars (still a recommendation) in the last issue and enjoyed the majority of the ’80s-style trappings, right down to the girl who looks like 1986 Wil Wheaton. But, for me, that nostalgia overload didn’t mask the show’s failings —most notably that it blew its mysteries too early, so by the time the characters worked out what was going on, we’d known for a couple of episodes or more. Whatever twists or surprises it had didn’t have the impact…

DON’T GET USED to this. This is the calm before the storm. The scene pictured above is one of the few moments of respite before the bullets start flying and bodies start piling up in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire. The sixth movie from the Brit director is a brutal, blackly comedic thriller, closer to Reservoir Dogs than the cold complexity of High-Rise. In Boston in 1978 (partially chosen because Wheatley loves the period; partially to take mobile phones out of the equation), two groups of people meet in a dilapidated warehouse to negotiate an arms sale. On one side, a couple of Irish Republicans (Cillian Murphy and Michael Smiley). On another, a band of skittish arms dealers, including Sharlto Copley’s Vernon and hired muscle Ord (Armie Hammer). “And I’m the…

OUT 15 SEPTEMBER CERT TBC / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Adam Wingard CAST James Allen McCune, Valorie Curry, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott, Wes Robinson, Corbin Reid PLOT Determined to find his missing sister, a college student (and brother of The Blair Witch Project’s Heather) ropes his friends into going to search for her in the woods she disappeared in. It turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a very bad idea. WEARABLE TECH IS a godsend. At least, it is for a certain type of filmmaker. A longstanding problem with found-footage films has been that, when the shit hits the fan (or the monster takes Manhattan), there’s that nagging question — “Why are you still filming?” A close relative of, “Why the hell aren’t you trying much harder to not die?” There have…

OUT 2 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 105 MINS DIRECTOR Noel Clarke CAST Noel Clarke, Jason Maza, Mike ‘Stormzy’ Omari, Arnold Oceng, David Ajala, Cornell John, Shanika Warren-Markland, Red Madrell, Fady Elsayed PLOT A decade on from the events of Kidulthood , Sam Peel (Clarke) has put his old life on the streets behind him in favour of a stable existence with girlfriend Kayla (Warren-Markland) and two kids. But this new reality is threatened when an enemy from the past comes looking for revenge. FOR THOSE WHO scarcely recognise the version of West London propagated by Four Weddings and Notting Hill, writer/director/actor Noel Clarke’s sketch of the dangerous streets humming with violence, just alongside those townhouses with the bright doors, has long offered a hyperreal contrast. Now, a decade on from…

OUT 16 SEPTEMBER CERT 12A / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Taika Waititi CAST Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rachel House, Rima Te Wiata, Rhys Darby PLOT After being delivered by child welfare services to a remote farm in the New Zealand countryside, troublesome fat kid Ricky Baker (Dennison) finds himself the object of a national manhunt when he and his grumpy foster father, ‘Uncle Hec’ (Neill), accidentally go missing in the bush. TAIKA WAITITI HAS had a stranger career trajectory than most. That he’s the man who’s being trusted to make Thor: Ragnarok by Marvel Studios implies a certain kind of director, but his previous film — 2014’s horrormockumentary What We Do In The Shadows — suggests someone entirely different. And if you were surprised to see Marvel hand him such a…

SKY ATLANTIC/SKY BOX SETS OUT 1 SEPTEMBER EPISODES VIEWED 1-7 DIRECTORS Steve Zaillian, Richard Price CAST John Turturro, Riz Ahmed, Michael Kenneth Williams, Bill Camp, Jeannie Berlin PLOT After borrowing his dad’s cab, New York college student Naz (Ahmed) has a wild night with a troubled girl. He wakes up with gaps in his memory, finds she has been murdered and seems destined for a life in prison until an unconventional defence attorney (Turturro) takes his case. AMERICAN REMAKES OF acclaimed British TV shows arrive with such frequency that you’d think they were sure things rather than a wild roll of the creative dice. When they fail, they fail big (Absolutely Fabulous, Life On Mars, the infamously awful unaired Spaced pilot). But the few that do work (the US version…

OUT NOW FORMATS: MAC, PC, PS3, PS4, 360, XB1 DIRECTOR Kent Mudle CAST Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham PLOT After turning down an offer from crime boss Carmine Falcone, Bruce Wayne (Baker) finds his manor ransacked and his family under investigation by the Gotham police. Meanwhile, an altercation at a warehouse points to a larger conspiracy that only the World’s Greatest Detective can unravel. WITH A FOILED heist, plenty of beaten-up thugs, and a showdown between Batman and Catwoman, the opening of Telltale Games’ latest series provides an appropriately spectacular introduction to this iteration of Gotham’s Dark Knight. But even with a liberal flinging of batarangs and verbal sparring between Bat and Cat, the action-packed prologue is overshadowed by a low-key scene with Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle conversing…

GARETH EDWARDS HAS A THEORY ABOUT THE TITLE OF HIS NEW MOVIE. The director admits that he came up with it “on the spot”, at the Star Wars Celebration fan event in London’s ExCel Centre in July, where he and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy presented fresh glimpses of that film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, to a 4,000-strong crowd. But it’s a good theory, nevertheless. “I had been thinking about it a while. Like, what does it mean? When we were brainstorming the titles, this was the one that stood out, and I think that was because, subconsciously, we realised it has multiple meanings.” On the surface, Rogue One is a military call sign, similar to those used by the pilots of the Rebel Alliance throughout the original Star…

28 OCT WHEN HE SAW the latest footage from Marvel’s Doctor Strange at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this summer, star Benedict Cumberbatch was stunned. “Some bits made me think, ‘Wow. God. That’s what I’m part of.’” It’s not that the actor didn’t know it would be large scale and effects heavy. “You have conceptual art that they show you, but you only really realise what you’re part of at the end of the process. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the effects while we were shooting, because a lot of them were real elements, whether it was sets that make a room minuscule or the costume designs.” Doctor Strange is, of course, a Manhattan surgeon whose hands are crippled after a car accident, closing off his profession. He travels…

28 OCT THERE COMES A time in every serious young actor’s career when he contemplates playing a boxer. Blame Raging Bull. But taking on the role of a fighter marks a readiness to mix with the big boys — especially if his life story is impossibly dramatic. That’s the case for Miles Teller, starring as Vinny ‘Paz’ Pazienza in director Ben Younger’s sports biopic. “This story isn’t well known, even among people who love boxing. But you know it’s a true story because it’s too unbelievable for fiction,” says Younger (who made finance thriller Boiler Room). “Miles is one of those incredibly dedicated actors who learned boxing and transformed himself for this role.” Pazienza is a real-life world-champion boxer whose career seemed over when a car crash left him with…

11 NOV EWAN MCGREGOR WAS long attached to star in a film adaptation of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, but the film struggled to find a director. After a third or fourth prospect departed McGregor worried that the project might die and with it his chance to play ‘the Swede’, a former high-school star athlete whose life is torn apart when his daughter (Dakota Fanning) becomes involved with radical 1960s domestic terrorists. “When I thought the film was not going to get made I was gutted. There was something about the father-daughter story, that I just couldn’t give up,” he says. “And my agent in LA — who I d been asking to get me something to direct for years — went, ‘Maybe the answer’s right in front of your nose.’”…

26 DEC “I THINK WE all have this fantasy that eventually we’ll have a Criterion Collection of our work,” laughs Justin Kurzel. “And I think there are filmmakers who are strictly auteurs like that. But I gravitate to directors who really surprise you by the choices they make. There’s something curious about their work. They don’t seem to repeat themselves.” Few directors have proved more surprising than the Australian himself. It seemed hard to imagine a more abrupt change of direction than that from hardcore real-life serial killer story Snowtown to last year’s handsome take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But now Kurzel has followed that with an adaptation of video-game Assassin’s Creed, a franchise that has sold over 78 million copies worldwide. Arguably there is a thematic link, in that all…

02 DEC THE FIRST TIME Tom Hanks met Chesley B Sullenberger, the pilot Hanks plays in Sully, he dropped an almighty clanger. The actor was explaining to the pilot how Clint Eastwood’s movie will condense, omit and outright change the events surrounding the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 into New York’s Hudson River on January 15, 2009. It was at this point that Sullenberger stopped the world’s nicest man in his tracks. “It wasn’t a crash,” he said quietly. “It was a forced water landing.” While much of Sully’s drama revolves around the trials Sullenberger went through post-January 15 — the subsequent hearings investigating his decision — Eastwood and his crew put every effort into getting the “forced water landing” right. Like all modern forms of research, Eastwood started…

13 JAN FACED WITH THE question of how to follow the massively acclaimed Whiplash, Damien Chazelle knew his answer at once. A musical! “I’d been working on La La Land since 2010,” he explains to Empire. “I was toying with the script while my friend Justin Hurwitz came up with musical ideas. It was hard to get off the ground, but Whiplash allowed it to happen — much to the horror of some of the executives we brought it to. It was a tough sell, but they took the gamble.” La La Land stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (with support from Whiplash star JK Simmons) as a jazz pianist and an actress falling in love in Los Angeles. But Chazelle wanted to keep it real and avoid too much…

AUGUST IT OFTEN FEELS, FOUR DECADES INTO HIS HOLLYWOOD CAREER, THAT OLIVER STONE WAS BORN CONTROVERSIAL. The director of Platoon, JFK and now the forthcoming Snowden is a startling series of contradictions: a philosopher willing to throw himself into physical conflict; a loyal friend who pushes his cast to breaking point; a commercially successful filmmaker who ignores studio rules. We talked to his friends and collaborators — Wall Street and W screenwriter Stanley Weiser, Platoon star John C McGinley, Talk Radio playwright/star Eric Bogosian, W star Josh Brolin and Salvador star Tony Plana — to try to unravel the puzzle… GUTTER CREDIT THE SOLDIER Oliver Stone went to Vietnam to die. The 21-year-old, boarding school-educated stockbroker’s son was, in his own words, a “complicated” youth who’d already written an unpublished,…

The series launched in September 1973, just four years after the live-action Star Trek had been cancelled. It ran on Saturday mornings. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was behind the revival, but took a hands-off approach, hiring Trek writer Dorothy ‘DC’ Fontana to be the script editor and associate producer. “The first thing I said was, ‘Is it going to be Star Trek?’” recalls Fontana. “He said yes, so I said yes immediately, because I knew Gene was utterly opposed to any kind of cadet version, kiddie version, or teenage version of Star Trek.” The Animated Series is perhaps alone in franchise spin-offs in having virtually the entire cast return to provide voices. “At first we were only going to use William Shatner [Kirk], Leonard Nimoy [Spock] and…

PIRANHA __ (1978) A ROGER CORMAN PROTÉGÉ, DANTE BROUGHT HIS LOW-BUDGET SKILL SET TO THIS JAWS RIP-OFF “I was worried that it was the worst movie ever made. I didn’t even go to the wrap party. I literally didn’t leave the editing room after we finished shooting. You lose your perspective completely: you start wondering if these piranhas are more believable if the shots of them are three frames long or six frames… It was all an elaborate con game to make it look like we knew what we were doing. To my amazement it not only turned out to be a hit, but it kind of put me on the map, which was very surprising.” THE HOWLING __ (1981) WEREWOLF HORROR-COMEDY WHICH DUELLED WITH JOHN LANDIS’ AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF…

COSTUME Shakespeare In Love was the most thrilling costume fitting. [Costume designer] Sandy Powell brought a drawing of a guy dressed in the worst shades of kaka brown. He looked like some kind of Elizabethan stink bug. I don’t think I’ve ever been lumbered with a costume I didn’t like. There are difficult ones, like Ra the Sun God in Gods Of Egypt. That was three-and-a-half hours in make-up because of the bald-singed golden head. DIRECTION On Shine , which was my second role in a film and I was in my forties, I said to [director] Scott Hicks, “I am playing a character who has got an extraordinary, effusive, aberrant personality. How do I keep that in the frame?” And he said, “I will let you know when you…

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE: SEASON 2 FROM 16 DECEMBER “WELCOME TO THE Nazi nibbles,” grins Rufus Sewell. Empire is on location for Season 2 of The Man In The High Castle, the Amazon show that spins Philip K Dick’s dystopian what-if-the-fascists-won-World-War-II novel to serial length. We expected sinister overlords; we didn’t expect them to be tucking into sponge cake and dainty sarnies. Still, as the actors sit on the manicured lawn of Obergruppenführer John Smith (Sewell) in Nazi New York — actually a sleepy suburb in Vancouver — the tone is tense. This is due to the presence of Reich-resister Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos), the show’s heroine, who has ditched the comparative safety of Japan-controlled San Francisco to infiltrate the belly of the beast. “Why is…

FIVE ACROBATICALLY GIFTED whippersnappers, clad in colour-coded onesies, fighting supervillains and monsters. While Mighty Morphin Power Rangers made a splash back in 1993, it’s now regarded as more than a little naff. Which makes director Dean Israelite all the more excited to reinvent it. “I grew up on it,” the 31-year-old tells Empire, “and I have all the same questions other people have. How are we going to update this? How will it exist in the contemporary superhero cinema canon?” Israelite’s solution was to ditch the more ridiculous elements (corny jokes, men in lizard suits, the words “Mighty” and “Morphin”). “I’ve tried to add naturalism and a grounded nature,” he says. “Everything is character-driven.” Power Rangers’ quintet (Naomi Scott, Becky G, RJ Cyler, Dacre Montgomery and Ludi Lin) must shake…

IN 1969, WHEN Luc Besson was just an enfant, he saw something that changed his life. Thumbing his way through a copy of Pilote magazine, he excitedly devoured the Asterix and Tintin cartoons. Then he got to something he’d never seen before: a comic strip called Valérian And Laureline, about a guy and a girl solving mysteries in space in the 28th century. “It was totally unusual,” he remembers. “With Marvel there is always a superhero who is wondering if he should be a superhero, then a villain to fight. But this was very human, in a world which isn’t human at all. As soon as I saw it, I got hooked.” Almost five decades later, the director behind The Fifth Element, Leon and Lucy is in post-production on a…

OUT 9 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR Matt Ross CAST Viggo Mortensen, Frank Langella, George McKay, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn PLOT Ben (Mortensen) and his wife abandoned modern life to raise their six children deep in the woods, teaching them high-minded ideals, intellectual theories and wilderness living. But when she dies, the family venture into the wider world to attend her funeral. CINEMA OFTEN TAKES a hard line on those who reject society for a simpler existence. Most often, they’re portrayed as weirdos, possibly murderers, who eke out a living deep in the woods surrounded by firearms, and probably inbreeding. Then there are the action heroes who retreat to a rustic cabin in search of peace, only to be called back for one last job. But it’s rare…

OUT 26 AUGUST CERT 15 / 114 MINS DIRECTOR Todd Phillips CAST Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper PLOT Florida, 2005. With America fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two twentysomething high school buddies get rich quick dealing weapons. But their dubious legal practices soon catch up with them. WAR DOGS IS being sold as a comedy, and given that it boasts The Hangover director Todd Phillips behind the wheel, perhaps understandably so. But those hoping to see Ken Jeong leap naked from the boot of a car are liable to be disappointed. There’s plenty of darkly funny moments, but this is a largely serious movie about an entirely serious subject. As a pacy opening spiel informs us, war is big business, and business was never…

OUT 16 SEPTEMBER CERT TBC / 127 MINS DIRECTOR Brad Furman CAST Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo, Benjamin Bratt, Amy Ryan PLOT Mid-1980s, Florida. US Customs agent Robert Mazur (Cranston) specialises in deep undercover assignments, but his next gig — posing as a slick businessman, alongside Kathy Ertz (Kruger) and Emir Abreu (Leguizamo), in order to ensnare renowned Colombian drug lord/trafficker Pablo Escobar — may prove to be his most dangerous yet. BRYAN CRANSTON HAS form when it comes to dealing with ruthless drug cartels. He spent several years doing it to astonishing, Emmy-winning effect on Breaking Bad, and now here he is once again, doing deals with the kind of people who’d shoot you in the face as soon as give you the time of day. Not that…

OUT NOW CERT 12A / 123 MINS DIRECTOR Paul Greengrass CAST Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Tommy Lee Jones PLOT Former assassin Jason Bourne (Damon) is living off the grid as a bareknuckle fighter. But when old ally Nicky Parsons (Stiles) finds him, he’s drawn into a global conspiracy involving social media encryption, a villainous CIA chief (Jones) and a final secret about his past. FEW SAGA-CLOSING images are as potent as Matt Damon swimming into the distant murk of New York’s East River at the end of The Bourne Ultimatum. So, it’s a testament to the hurtling sense of purpose at the heart of this visceral, uncompromising fifth instalment in the spy franchise that, as everyone’s favourite amnesiac assassin brings his brand of improvised chaos to…

OUT 19 AUGUST CERT 15 / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Ricky Gervais CAST Ricky Gervais, Ben Bailey Smith, Tom Basden, Tom Bennett, Jo Hartley, Andy Burrows PLOT Long after his days at Wernham Hogg, David Brent is working as a sales rep at a Slough-based cleaning products distributor — but he has a plan. Using his pension to finance one final punt at his dream, he stages a three-week tour with his reluctant band and a rapping protégé (Smith). DAVID BRENT HAS experienced all manner of humiliations — accidentally headbutting a potential secretary, getting fired on camera, the grunting majesty of “the dance” — but as he wanders through this fitfully funny big-screen resurrection you feel sorry for him for an entirely new reason. Slough’s premier entertainer has been denied his…

Is that a Space Monkey? That’s the way the cast and crew referred to this character before he was given his official name, which is Bistan. He doesn’t in fact look entirely simian: there’s something mole-like about his eyes, and something of Doctor Who’s Sontarans about his potato-shaped dome. We’re told the hair under his jumpsuit is black, in contrast to his white facial whiskers. What does Bistan do? Plot-wise, his function in Rogue One is firmly under wraps (director Gareth Edwards says we don’t “necessarily get to know” him, so he may be quite peripheral). But we know he’s a door gunner on one of the newly revealed U-Wing vehicles. That means his eyesight’s probably better than the whole “mole” thing might suggest. U-Wing? Yes, like an X-Wing or…

TBC OCT DOCTOR WHO HAS already had spin-offs with Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Now we get Class, a sort of time travel-tinged Buffy The Vampire Slayer with more aliens and fewer hellbeasts. Created by Patrick Ness, author of young adult hits A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy, it’s set at Coal Hill Academy in London. “Coal Hill has existed in Doctor Who since literally episode one,” says Ness. “The Doctor’s granddaughter went there. So we thought, ‘All that time activity at the school, has that caused any problems? What do you know, it has!’” The boundaries of space-time have been stretched to breaking point, allowing all manner of monsters through. That’s a lot to deal with when you’re already facing the teenage horrors of sex,…

21 OCT JACK REACHER: MAVERICK. Hero. Legend. A former military cop who now wanders the highways and lowways of America, he keeps himself to himself, says very little, and breaks a lot of criminal bones. And he prefers to do it alone. But in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the second film based on Lee Child’s incredibly popular novels, Tom Cruise’s Reacher teams up with Cobie Smulders’ Major Susan Turner, who’s taken over Reacher’s old position at the head of the 110th MP unit. After striking up a flirtatious friendship over the phone, Reacher heads to West Virginia to take Turner out to dinner — only to find that she’s been arrested on a trumped-up charge. As for Reacher, he’s drafted back into the army (that explains the title) on…

21 OCT FILMMAKER MIRA NAIR calls Queen Of Katwe “the first Disney movie made in Africa not to feature any animals — except perhaps the occasional chicken.” Nor does the film include princesses, though it does have plenty of kings and queens. Little wooden ones. It’s the story of Phiona Mutesi, a girl from a Ugandan slum who one day wandered into a chess club mostly, as Nair puts it, “because they were offering free porridge”, and discovered a gift for the game that would bring her international fame and change her life. The Indian-American Nair, who has lived in Uganda for years (her husband is a Ugandan academic), was attracted to the project for any number of reasons. “If we don’t tell our stories, no-one else will,” she says.…

04 NOV IT’S BEEN SEVEN long years since designer Tom Ford premiered A Single Man, his first film as director, and emerged as a promising filmmaking talent. “I’ve been pretty busy,” Ford says of the delay. “We’ve launched womenswear, a cosmetics divisions and, most importantly, I had a son… Then, of course, it takes a while to find the right project.” That project is an adaptation of a 1993 novel by Austin Wright. It follows Susan (Amy Adams), sent a manuscript by Tony, the man she divorced long ago (Jake Gyllenhaal). Tony’s story tells Susan exactly what he thinks about the way she ended their relationship. The film recounts the couple’s real lives but also his fictional narrative, with a cast that includes Laura Linney, Isla Fisher and Michael Shannon.…

23 DEC “IT TAKES PLACE in the future, but hopefully it’s timeless,” says Chris Pratt of his latest foray into science-fiction. Passengers is set aboard a luxury spaceship on a one-way, 120-year journey to Homestead Colony, a trip made possible by that sci-fi staple: hibernation pods. Things get interesting when two pods open several decades early, belonging to steerage-class mechanic Jim Preston (Pratt) and upper-class writer Aurora Dunn (Jennifer Lawrence). Their relationship, alone on a perilous voyage, is the film’s focus. “I like to say this is Titanic meets Gravity, in that the relationship is so strong and the visuals are so amazing,” claims producer Neal H Moritz. “Even though it’s set in the future, we want to have a relatability to it. Deep down it’s a story about immigrants.”…

09 DEC WHEN DIRECTORS JOSH Gordon and Will Speck (Blades Of Glory, The Switch) pitched their new movie, everyone had ideas for them. “When you say you’re making a movie about office Christmas parties people come out of the woodwork and start giving you material,” says Gordon. “We pitched it to DreamWorks,” adds Speck, “and I think because Spielberg had a lot of office parties back when he was at Amblin we were off and running. It’s a night rife with danger; you’re always one drink away from ruining the rest of your life.” They built a story about a company led by Jennifer Aniston’s CEO, who plans on shutting down her brother’s (TJ Miller) division. But if Miller’s staff can snag a key client with one great holiday bash,…

TBC JAN BRYAN FULLER FIRST read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in 2003 when he was working on the pilot for dark comedy-drama show Dead Like Me. “I loved the world almost more than the [plot] because it was such a glorious toy box. It felt like the first step in so many great stories.” The story of American Gods follows ex-con Shadow (The 100’s Ricky Whittle), released from prison early when his wife (Emily Browning) is killed in a car accident. With all his hopes for a happy reunion destroyed, the desolate Shadow accepts a job offer from the mysterious Mr Wednesday (Ian McShane). Gradually, he learns that ancient gods live around the US, brought to the New World with their believers but abandoned to fend for themselves in an…

THE EMPIRE VERDICT CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR CERT 12 What we said: “Directors Joe and Anthony Russo don’t just want to rocket your heart into your mouth with their action sequences; they want to keep your brain firmly engaged, too. The best Marvel Studios movie yet.” Notable extras: Commentary by the Russos and the writers; making of featurettes; a couple of deleted scenes; gag reel. 00:12:03 SKULL AND CROSSBONES __ Frank Grillo’s The Winter Soldier bad guy, Brock Rumlow (aka Crossbones), is blown up (something Grillo grumbled about publicly) in the film’s opening sequence. “We can’t imagine he was super-jazzed,” says writer Stephen McFeely. “But he’s fundamentally connected to the Civil War,” adds co-writer Christopher Markus. “Because of that explosion; the Avengers take the blame for it.” 00:32:15 FAREWELL, AGENT…

HE’S AN UNASSUMING bloke in his seventies, clad in spectacles and a homely sweater/jacket combo, who barely talks above a whisper. But when Patrick Stewart’s Darcy Banker rolls into Green Room, roughly 22 minutes in, it heralds the arrival of 2016’s most terrifying screen villain. “There are no two ways about it,” says Jeremy Saulnier, the film’s writer/ director, “when Darcy walks on screen, he’s totally in charge.” The leader of the neo-Nazi gang who hold an unfortunate punk band, The Ain’t Rights, hostage in the green room of their scuzzy, remote, Portland venue after they witness a murder, Darcy is cool-headed, coldly sadistic, and hugely quotable. Saulnier based the character on a number of men he’d had the misfortune to encounter in the punk-rock scene on both sides of…

IT IS A truth universally acknowledged that, of all the many virtues of Whit Stillman’s sharp, witty Jane Austen adaptation, Love & Friendship, Tom Bennett’s performance as the hapless imbecile, Sir James Martin, is top of the heap. Whether he’s burbling about Moses bringing 12 commandments down from the mount or expressing a love of peas, Bennett’s Sir James is one of the stand-out comedic performances of the year to date. How did you get the role? It was just another audition. Once I left the room, I forgot it ever happened. As a jobbing actor, nine times out of ten you don’t hear anything again, so to protect myself I forget it happened. What’s the secret of Sir James’ appeal? He’s a loveable idiot. And if anyone knows anything…

BEFORE THE STATH. Before The Rock. Before Arnie, Sly, and possibly the creation of the universe, there was The Chuck. Unleashed in an action era that got its kicks from cars and guns, Chuck didn’t need weapons. A former six-time Professional Middleweight Karate Champion, he was the weapon: the lightning bolt that birthed the macho, muscley, one-man-army badass. Chuck’s evolution as action icon started with an almighty pasting at the hands of Bruce Lee, his former sparring partner. Beard-free, with Weetabix sideburns, Chuck rocks up late in The Way Of The Dragon (1972), an end-of-level boss hired by Mafia goons to eradicate Lee. Staged inside Rome’s Colosseum, the ten-minute death-match — sparse, wordless, wide-framed — is breath-stealingly brutal. Lee breaks Chuck’s arm, his leg, rips out his chest hair and…

FIRST LOOK THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE OUT 10 FEBRUARY, 2017 THE NINTH SOLO Batman film is a little different from the ones that have come before. All the familiar elements are present and correct: Batcave, gadgets, industrial levels of angst. But this time the Caped Crusader (Will Arnett) is not only the guardian of Gotham City, but a choking hazard for young children. For this is LEGO Batman, getting his own spin-off after stealing the show in 2014’s The LEGO Movie. Expect the silliest exploits since Adam West busted out the Shark-Repellent Bat Spray. “Just the idea of Batman is absurd,” chuckles director Chris McKay, such an ardent fan he has a Catwoman tattoo. “A guy who learns karate and dresses up at night to beat people up is ridiculous.…

FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 OUT 28 APRIL, 2017 WHAT AWAITS MARVEL’S band of cosmic scallywags in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, the sequel to the 2014 smash hit? Well, for one thing, some serious bickering. “You’re going to see these characters having to endure the realities of being in a family,” says Chris Pratt, whose blowhard hero Star-Lord will learn he’s the son of an entity named Ego the Living Planet. “You’re talking about a guy who’s been longing to know who his father is for a long time. He’ll discover if that person lives up to the expectations he has in his head.” When casting an actor to play a living planet, director James Gunn really only had one option: living legend Kurt…

1 Star Trek: Discovery is set in the same timeline as the other Tr e k TV series, rather than the new movies. It will look and feel different to the latter. “We were looking for a new aesthetic,” says showrunner Bryan Fuller. “We had to strike new ground that had Star Trek in its DNA at a fundamental level. It felt like a nice way to let the hardcore Star Trek audience know that I have their backs.” 2 In a break from the episodic nature of the previous series, Fuller says the story is designed to be consumed in one big binge-watch. “We are telling the story in a modern way, which allows us not to try to wrap up the tale in 42 minutes,” he reveals. “We…

© MARVEL COMICS, INSTAGRAM LIKE MANY KIDS with a robust imagination, Charlie Hunnam grew up “carving sticks into swords” and having imaginary duels down the local woods. Movies such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Excalibur, he insists, gave him the “idea of becoming an actor”. Especially the latter, John Boorman’s operatic 1981 adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. “I must have watched it 40 times over an 18-month period,” says the Geordie star of Pacific Rim and Sons Of Anarchy. “It’s a childhood dream come true to play King Arthur.” That said, Hunnam is the first to admit that, thanks to director Guy Ritchie, this take on the legendary monarch won’t be someone you’ll recognise from the Arthurian epics of yore. He’s introduced in this origin yarn, subtitled…

SINCE HANGING UP Harry Potter’s wand in 2011, Daniel Radcliffe has demonstrated a voracious appetite for variety. In the past 18 months alone, the 27-year-old has bounced from theatre (off-Broadway play Privacy) to TV (BBC Grand Theft Auto origin story, The Gamechangers). He’s also found time to fit in an impressively diverse indie double bill. Swiss Army Man hooked him from the first page of the script. “All I knew was that Paul Dano was on board, and the logline,” he says. “Which was something like, ‘A suicidal man finds a corpse and they go on a magical journey together.’” With Dano on board as the suicidal man, Hank, that left Radcliffe with the role of the corpse, Manny, who comes back to life (of sorts) and displays an array…

ON-SET EXCLUSIVE MONSTER TRUCKS OUT 3 FEBRUARY, 2017 GIVEN THE TITLE, you might expect hulking vehicles with moon-sized tyres and hordes of howling blokes. Monster Trucks, however, is a much more surreal prospect, featuring a monster in a truck. Chris Wedge (Ice Age) is the director behind the $100 million action-comedy, which sees an oil-drilling accident unearth a species of subterranean alien — one which escapes into a Midwest town and under the hood of a vehicle owned by Tripp (Lucas Till). Cue creature merging with machine, an inter-species buddy-up and a race to get the beast back underground. It’s basically ‘ET: The Extra-Tyre-Estrial’, or Free Willy on wheels. Yet it was another movie that proved the inspiration. “Chris gave me Romancing The Stone to watch,” says Till between takes…

OUT 23 SEPTEMBER CERT 15 / 111 MINS DIRECTOR Colm McCarthy CAST Sennia Nanua, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close PLOT Melanie (Nanua) has grown up in a world enduring a zombie-like apocalypse thanks to a fungus known as the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. She lives under heavy guard for reasons that are initially unclear, but when her home falls to the horde and she goes on the run, it emerges that she may be the key to ending the struggle. THE GIRL WITH All The Gifts opens with a young girl called Melanie (Nanua) lovingly examining a photo of a kitten in a bare, concrete room. Her morning alarm — a siren — sounds, someone bangs on the metal door, then she’s restrained, at gunpoint, before being trussed in restraints like…

OUT 2 SEPTEMBER CERT 12A / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Woody Allen CAST Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively PLOT 1930s Hollywood. New Yorker Bobby Dorfman (Eisenberg) arrives seeking employment from his uncle Phil Stern (Carell), a film agent. Working in the mailroom, he falls under the spell of Stern’s secretary, Vonnie (Stewart), and they grow closer. Problem is, Vonnie’s already seeing someone. CAFÉ SOCIETY HAS enough charm, smarts and jokes to initially fool you it’s another of Woody Allen’s trademark returns to form. The truth is it falls far short of his ’70s and ’80s highs, so it’s perhaps best we compare it to the more recent Allen canon. So: it doesn’t hit the heights of Midnight In Paris or Blue Jasmine, but is fizzier than Magic In…

OUT 12 AUGUST CERT 15 / 89 MINS DIRECTORS Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan CAST Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, Edward Norton, Salma Hayek, James Franco, Paul Rudd PLOT Shopwell’s supermarket is full of happy groceries, waiting to go to the ‘Great Beyond’. But one day they discover evidence to suggest there is a much darker future in store for them. IN THE ORIGINAL Shrek, the Gingerbread Man is tortured by the vile Lord Farquaad. Dunked in milk with his legs ripped off, he’s threatened with even worse bodily harm. “No, not my buttons!” he squeals. “Not my gumdrop buttons!” It’s apt that Conrad Vernon, the man who both created and voiced ‘Gingy’, is one of the co-directors of Sausage Party. Because, like the scene described…

OUT NOW CERT 15 / 123 MINS DIRECTOR David Ayer CAST Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Cara Delevingne PLOT Evil government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has a plan to deal with the Superman-heralded ‘metahuman’ threat to the world: coerce the globe’s deadliest bad guys into an emergency super-team. And when Midway City becomes the heart of a plot to extinguish humanity, that’s just what she does, with expectedly unexpected results. IF MARVEL HAS the best superheroes, so, the prevailing geek-logic goes, DC has the coolest villains. So it’s only sensible they’re finally placed front, centre and in the firing line. Filling its entire super-team with previously unseen antagonists, Suicide Squad represents a Flash-speed sprint of a catch-up for…

NETFLIX OUT 2 SEPTEMBER EPISODES VIEWED 1-6 SHOWRUNNERS José Padilha, Eric Newman CAST Wagner Moura, Boyd Holbrook, Pedro Pascal, Joanna Christie, Paulina Gaitan, Diego Cataño, Maurice Compte, Raúl Méndez PLOT Pablo Escobar’s (Moura) story continues where it left off, with his prison-cum-pleasuredome being invaded by “4,000 soldiers, a 250-man team of Colombia’s elite forces, seven dogs and four fucking helicopters”. When that’s resolved we then follow him over the final 15 months of his life. THE EVENTS OF Pablo Escobar’s life are well documented. Netflix hasn’t tried to hide them, either — splashing the events at the denouement of this series all over its advertising. But if you consider historical events — and frequently dramatised historical events at that — to be spoilers, now is the time to stop reading.…

30 SEP PAUL NEWMAN AND Steve McQueen thought they had it tough facing a skyscraper fire in The Towering Inferno. But they have nothing on the real-life disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, as told in director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg’s reunion after Lone Survivor. When the drilling rig in the Gulf Of Mexico exploded in flames on 20 April 2010, it was briefly the brightest spot on Earth as the crew scrambled first to contain the disaster and then to survive. Yet at the time, the human tragedy was somewhat overlooked. “Like everybody, during the spill our focus was on this horrible environmental disaster,” says Berg. “Then [American news show] 60 Minutes did a piece with Mike Williams [Wahlberg’s onscreen character], the last guy to get…

14 OCT STAR QUALITY IS a funny thing. As the lead in American Honey, opposite Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough, director Andrea Arnold chose a total unknown, a psychology student with no acting experience. “Literally, Andrea came up to me on the beach as I was spring-breaking in Florida,” laughs 20-year-old Sasha Lane. “I had no idea who she was. But she had this really calming energy, so I didn’t sense any weirdness.” Lane’s own attitude sealed the deal to play Star. “It had been a long week,” she recalls. “I was in a very ‘fuck it’-type mood. I was like, ‘Cool, I’m down. You seem nice.’ Which I don t recommend all the time, but it worked.” This “fuck it”-type mood came in handy for Star, a girl who…

21 OCT “SHE’S GOT A little psycho in her,” says Anna Kendrick of Poppy, her perky pink character in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls. Inspired by the collectable ’90s toys with the crazy hair — now spun into wildly colourful characters and an entirely new plot — Trolls sees Poppy attempting to rescue kidnapped friends. Her quest involves singing and — in a kids’ animation first — passing through the digestive tracts of several large beasts. “Every time I came in and tried to do a cutesy character, our producer would [say], ‘Don’t do a voice. Do your own voice’,” says Kendrick. “Her dialogue is so peppy that it’s hard not to go cartoony, but it was a nice surprise that the more I sounded like myself, the more that character worked.…

18 NOV THERE ARE PLENTY of reasons why an actor would sign up to star in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. There’s the opportunity to wander the magical world of JK Rowling. There are the majestic sets designed by Harry Potter veteran Stuart Craig. There are bills to pay. But above all, we suspect, there’s the chance they might get to swish a wand around. “Nothing could cut into the excitement I got when the prop department said to me, ‘Here’s a wand you can take back to your hotel room to practise,’” says Colin Farrell, who plays Percival Graves, a kind of magical G-man on the hunt for hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne). “I took that little wooden thing home and had a little fiddle around with…

25 NOV IF 2003’S BAD Santa was the feel-bad seasonal comedy of the century, we might expect the sequel to be feel-worse. But, promises director Mark Waters, the curmudgeonly sequel — like the first — is far from un-festive. “The first one is a lot of people’s favourite holiday movie,” he laughs. “It just kind of snuck up on people and there’s real heart at its centre.” Not usually one to repeat himself, Billy Bob Thornton was keen to reprise Willie Soke once the right concept appeared. This new story introduces Kathy Bates as Willie’s “awful” mother, bringing him in on a job intended to rob a Chicago charity of its Yuletide proceeds. Bates is only eight years older than Thornton, but the film finesses the issue by suggesting she…

02 DEC WHEN JOHN MUSKER and Ron Clements made The Little Mermaid in 1989, they brought Little Shop Of Horrors’ Alan Menken and Howard Ashman aboard to give the tunes some edge. Repeating the trick for Moana, they’ve recruited Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda is the most sought-after composer in the world right now after creating Hamilton, a wildly successful hip-hop musical about one of America’s founding fathers. But Musker and Clements could offer an inducement that few could match: their leading man, The Rock. “Lin is a big Dwayne Johnson and wrestling fan,” laughs Clements. Johnson plays Maui, the demi-god who helps Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) on her quest to save the South Pacific. With Miranda aboard and, we’re assured, Johnson and Cravalho’s good singing voices, expect the music to take root…

06 JAN IMAGINE A COMBINATION of Groot and Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla with a gruff, no-nonsense manner, and you’re in the ballpark for Liam Neeson’s Monster in Juan Antonio Bayona’s latest. He’s an impossibly ancient tree creature that wades into the life of Lewis MacDougall’s Connor after his mother (Felicity Jones) is diagnosed with cancer. Patrick Ness’ screenplay, adapted from his own brilliant bestselling book, sketches the relationship between the brooding, angry Connor and the gruff, unforgiving Monster as a dark, complex, mature affair. Empire met the Monster — sort of — on a bitterly cold January night at the Parc Audiovisual de Catalunya. The former TB hospital on the outskirts of Barcelona has been temporarily transformed into a typically English back garden. There’s green patio furniture, a swing, and a…

Where do you start when you’re trying to write about the making of The Greasy Strangler? What is a greasy strangler? Somebody who has trouble strangling because his hands are so slippery? No. He is a very good strangler. Trust me. Yes, he has greasy hands — or greasy gloves, to be precise. But he can strangle you until your eyes pop out of your skull, pally. Not so long ago I sent an email to my co-writer, Toby Harvard. I told him I wanted to write a script for our favourite ‘actor’, Carl Solomon [title star of web series Hal The Pervert Ghost]. I wanted to write a star vehicle for the world’s least likely star. Toby replied that Carl could be a “greasy strangler”. I replied with three…

TIM BURTON is shuddering on the sofa of a posh London hotel. The patron saint of oddballs, the sultan of spook and spinner of shadowy phantasms is recoiling from a single word: Burtonesque. "When you just said that to me, my skin crawled," he says, dressed in his usual Curecira-1985 uniform. "It actually makes me sad. I've spent my whole life trying to become a human being. I struggle with that anyway." Over the past 31 years, Burton’s 18 films have articulated and dramatised that struggle not in heavy or artsy drama but in black comedies, kid flicks and big-budget blockbusters. Few filmmakers have delivered such a consistent body of work, filled with so many recurring themes, motifs and collaborations. To underline the point, the trailer for his latest, Miss…

MJ KIM/MPL COMMUNICATIONS ARCHIVE STILLS © APPLE CORPS LIMITED Ron Howard first met The Beatles — half of them, anyway — exactly as you’d hope Ron Howard had met The Beatles: as a young actor on the set of Happy Days. One day in January 1974 during the show’s first year, John Lennon came to the set to introduce his son, Julian, to Fonzie and the gang. Ringo Starr doesn’t recall his own, separate visit to the set but then, Howard says with a grin, “He admits there’s a lot he doesn’t quite remember about the ’70s.” Howard wants to make clear that he was never a superfan. He was among the 73 million Americans who watched The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February, 1964, and he…

The current take on Hammer Horror tends to be ‘once shocking, now cosy’. The films the studio made between The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) and To The Devil A Daughter (1976) are held in enormous (and justified) affection for quality acting (from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), bosomy starlets, swashbuckling dash and full-blooded embrace of gothic melodrama. Amid the celebrations, it’s easy to forget a simple fact: Hammer films could be terrifying. The obsessive theme is good against evil — wracked with contradictions that mean it’s not as easy to take sides as you might think. Watching a Hammer film is like flirting with evil all evening then going home with good at the end of the party. The Devil Rides Out (1967), in which Christopher Lee’s Duc de Richleau…

AS POWERFUL AS a blast from the best brass section, Alan Parker’s The Commitments was a jolt of joy in a humdrum early ’90s British film scene. Based on Roddy Doyle’s 1987 novel, it follows wide-boy music fanatic Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) trying to assemble a soul band on the Northside of Dublin. Without a shamrock or leprechaun in sight, it offered a fresh view of contemporary Ireland, seasoned with great music, sharp laughs and an admirably creative use of swearing (“You ever call me a fuckin’ eejit again, you’ll go home with the drumsticks stuck up your hole”). Twenty-five years on, the director, writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and key cast revisit the making of a one-hit wonder. DESTINATION ANYWHERE As a movie, The Commitments started life…