Table of contents for February 2021 in Empire

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ LIKES to keep it in the family. In 2005, his son Racer, then seven, had a ‘Story By’ credit on The Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lava Girl. Today, Rodriguez returns to the kids’ superhero genre with standalone sequel We Can Be Heroes; the grown-up Racer is now a producer, while his siblings have credits in set design, composing and editing. “Sharkboy captured a specific time in their lives and they want to pass that on,” the director tells Empire of his filmmaking progeny. “It felt like we were mentoring the next generation, like in the movie.” Rodriguez’s mentorship extended beyond his own family: the young cast, playing the tween team named ‘The Heroics’, were asked to be part of the creative process. “We’d have drawing sessions so we…

THERE ARE THREE robots in new indie sci-fi Archive. Set in 2038, it sees engineer George (played by Theo James) work alone in his Japanese lab as he desperately attempts to recreate his late wife through artificial intelligence. Debut director Gavin Rothery, who previously collaborated with his friend Duncan Jones, says he wanted to expand on his work as concept designer on cult 2009 sci-fi Moon. “I wanted to do my own visual evolution from GERTY [the Al assistant in the film],” he says. THE PROTOTYPE: J1 George’s first robot, J1, is a big, chunky thing. The design, Rothery explains, comes from the character and his obsessions. “I was always keen that J1 looked quite primitive,” Rothery says. “The idea is that George is only concentrating on the brains. He’s…

How have the last few months been for you, pandemic-wise? It’s been fine. Look, I’m a lucky person. I have a home here in LA with three acres of land in town. And I’m also lucky because our kids are three and they’re not 12, and I don’t have to sit with them in front of a computer and relearn trigonometry. For us, it’s as good as it can be. I worry about my folks – my dad’s 87 and my mom’s 82. They’re in Kentucky. You worry about them. Are things getting better in California? It’s just frustrating. I always thought that Trump was just a dumbass but it’s worse than that – he actually knew it was five times worse than the flu and he knew it was…

THE LAST TIME someone adapted H.G. Wells’ 1896 sci-fi horror story The Island Of Dr. Moreau, about a scientist playing God and creating human monsters via vivisection, it resulted in the 1996 Marlon Brando/Val Kilmer-starring turkey-monster, one of the most disastrous shoots ever. But that hasn’t deterred writer Zack Stentz, who is currently developing Moreau, a TV show based on the novel. “The problem with that movie wasn’t anything inherently unadaptable about the material,” Stentz points out. “There had been two successful film versions beforehand. That one went off the rails because Richard Stanley was this indie director in over his head with all of these crazy personalities. But that movie ain’t boring. Which points to how compelling the material is.” Stentz has previously dealt with mutants (X-Men: First Class)…

THE LAST TIME Empire interviewed Carey Mulligan, in 2018, she hinted at a new phase in her career, wanting to shake things up. Come through, then, Emerald Fennell, writer and director of Promising Young Woman. “The mission,” says Mulligan now, thinking back to 2018, “was to do things that I hadn’t seen before, or that looked at things in a different way, and Promising Young Woman definitely did that. I read it and thought, ‘What the actual fuck? How do you pull this off?”’ The film is indeed a tonal rollercoaster - as Mulligan says, “dark, dark comedy and tragedy and trauma and darkness and horror that’s also a love story... and a thriller” — but incredibly, it works. The same applies to Mulligan’s character Cassie, a young woman who…

Shutterstock IT’S A REMAKE OF AN INFAMOUS ORIGINAL The Queen Of Black Magic is a new version of Liliek Sudjio’s gnarly 1981 film. “It was all about that gore factor,” laughs the update’s director, Kimo Stamboel. There was a lot of that in Joko Anwar’s new screenplay, too. Executive producer Sunil Samtani even asked Stamboel to tone it down. “I said, ‘We can’t, man!’ I wanted to push it a bit.” IT’S AN EYE-POPPING ORDEAL The updated story takes place in an orphanage under supernatural assault from a vengeful former resident. People are boiled and burned, and suffer ocular trauma and forced self-mutilation. There’s also a startling beheading. “I saw the original when I was seven, and I was traumatised by the head coming off,” Stamboel recalls. “When the producers…

OUT 26 DECEMBER CERT 15 / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Christopher Landon CAST Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Misha Osherovich, Celeste O’Connor PLOT High-schooler Millie Kessler (Newton) falls foul of serial killer the Blissfield Butcher (Vaughn), only to awaken inhabiting the killer’s body. With 24 hours to reverse the curse, Millie must corner the killer and prevent him from using her own body to wreak havoc at Blissfield High. CHRISTOPHER LANDON IS, it seems, on a mission to inject some fun back into the horror genre. After the peppy but predictable Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, the director struck comedy-horror paydirt with 2017’s Happy Death Day and its equally cheeky sequel. His latest, Freaky, doubles down on that formula, dialling up both gags and gore to deliver an unashamedly silly splatter-fest…

OUT NOW (CINEMAS) / 23 DECEMBER (NETFLIX) CERT 12A / 122 MINS DIRECTOR George Clooney CAST George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Booth, Demián Bichir, Caoilinn Springall PLOT The year is 2049, and the Earth is toast. Three weeks after a devastating global “event” that has left the planet uninhabitable, reclusive scientist Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney) races to stop a team of astronauts from returning, thereby accidentally dooming the future of the species. IT OPENS WITH a man with a hefty grey beard, toiling in the Arctic to help humanity. So far, so The Christmas Chronicles 2. But unlike that other Netflix offering of this season, The Midnight Sky is a sombre, urgent affair. George Clooney’s seventh film as director, it adapts an elegiac 2016 novel by…

OUT 3 JANUARY (STARZPLAY) EPISODES VIEWED 4 OF 9 SHOWRUNNERS Josh Boone, Benjamin Cavell CAST James Marsden, Amber Heard, Greg Kinnear, Odessa Young, Alexander Skarsgård, Whoopi Goldberg PLOT After a man-made plague takes out most of the population, a group of survivors, who share visions of prophet Mother Abagail (Goldberg), lead a community to Colorado. Yet they also dream of Randall Flagg (Skarsgård), a supernatural force with plans for destruction. WHEN HE WROTE The Stand in 1978, Stephen King envisaged a novel that played like The Lord Of The Rings set in modern-day America, with Las Vegas playing the role of Mordor (one does simply not walk into playing slot machines). The resulting 823-page doorstop – in 1990 a special edition inflated it to 1,152 pages – about the after…

IT WAS A period of civil war. The fandom had divided into factions increasingly entrenched in opposing viewpoints, with little hope of surrender from any one side. For a saga that was always supposed to be about balance, Star Wars somehow lost it along the way. After The Force Awakens reignited the spark of the galaxy far, far away, the unified excitement it conjured couldn’t last. The Last Jedi split opinion like a Resistance cruiser blasting through a Dreadnought at lightspeed. Solo: A Star Wars Story demystified a character whose mystery was really the whole point, and sputtered at the box office. And The Rise Of Sky walker proved even more divisive in its attempt to bring all nine Episodes of the Skywalker Saga full circle. The one thing Star…

GEORGE LUCAS’ GALAXY far, far away has always gone a little bit West. From the frontier-saloon styling of the Mos Eisley Cantina to Boba Fett’s unmistakable Spaghetti flavour (right down to his poncho-like cape and the Clint Eastwood squint of his visor), the Western has been in the saga’s postmodern mythical mix since its inception. But it has never been so obvious - essential, even - than in The Mandalorian. The setting is pure Wild West. Not only because it skims around the scummy, villainous Outer Rim, where neither Empire nor New Republic are able to impose law and civilisation. But also temporally. The Western era is very narrow, very specific, briefly emerging from the chaos and rubble of a vast, intense Civil War. Ring a bell? The show’s hero,…

IF YOU WERE relying on Bond to deliver the most bracing pre-title sequence of 2021, prepare to be blindsided by Pieces Of A Woman. No sooner will you have settled in your seat than Martha - a blonde, heavily pregnant woman played with career-topping commitment by Vanessa Kirby - starts to scrunch up her face in ¡pain and pace her elegantly-lit Boston apartment. An uncut 24-minute birth scene unspools from here. In that time, Martha’s eyes roll in and out of focus. She swears and apologises and asks if the bin has been taken out, while her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf) tries desperately to be helpful. Most of all, though, Martha burps. “A lot of women have thanked me for the burping, which I really wasn’t expecting,” says Kirby from…

AN INVISIBLE, GASLIGHTING stalker. A religiously unhinged nurse. A literally haunted refugee couple. An elderly woman whose dementia turns supernatural. And a demon-plagued Zoom call. If you required proof that horror is a rich, relevant and ever-evolving genre, you need look no further than the 2020 movies of Leigh Whannell, Rose Glass, Remi Weekes, Natalie Erika James and Rob Savage. It seems there’s no end to the ways these inventive, daring filmmakers can find to give us the willies. So, one evening in late November, Empire summoned them all together - from LA, Melbourne, London and, in one case, the middle of a film shoot - to share their appreciation for the dark side and reflect on a fantastic year for fright-crafting. Of course, we had to do it via…

ON THE CORNER OF 86TH AND BROADWAY, KEVIN BACON FELL TO HIS KNEES AND SCREAMED. It was early 1989, and he was out walking with his pregnant wife Kyra Sedgwick, discussing a movie he’d just agreed to do. Or rather, had to do. Recently married, with a kid on the way and low on funds, the 30-year-old New Yorker hadn’t had a hit since Footloose five years earlier. His feelings about what he’d just signed up for were mixed. It was not the kind of movie he ever imagined doing. “I took myself very seriously,” he tells Empire. “I wanted Oscar-worthy work. But I was feeling a lot of pressure.” Suddenly, all that pressure forced him down to the sidewalk. He looked at Sedgwick and wailed. “I can’t believe I’m…

HOW DID IT TAKE SO LONG for Hollywood to notice that every kid loves dinosaurs, and that every adult remembers loving dinosaurs, and capitalise on it? A few films had flirted with pre-history - King Kong, The Valley Of Gwangi, One Million Years B.C., animations like The Land Before Time - but none had entirely hit the spot. At the turn of the 1990s we were still waiting for the dinosaur mayhem we instinctively knew could be ours. Surely one day someone would compensate the generations disappointed by the false promises of the title One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (it’s just a bunch of bones that gets stolen! And it sounded so exciting). Then came Michael Crichton’s bestselling book Jurassic Park, and Steven Spielberg’s eye for a story, and…

BETTER CALL SAUL, the Breaking Bad prequel that tells the story of how rogue lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) becomes flamboyant criminal attorney Saul Goodman, has been threatening to eclipse its progenitor for some time. With its astonishing, ambitious penultimate season, it may have achieved that. Showrunner/ co-creator Peter Gould tells us how. GENE MAKES A STAND Each season of Better Call Saul has started with a black-and-white segment looking at what became of Odenkirk’s Jimmy/Saul after his larcenous life was blown towards the end of Breaking Bad. The answer: a new life as Gene, manager of a Cinnabon in Nebraska. Except now Gene’s been recognised as Saul. But rather than run again, the prologue ends with Jimmy/Saul/Gene deciding to stay and fight for what passes as his life. “He’s…

PICK OF THE MONTH DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA OUT 11 JANUARY / CERT 12 / 105 MINS DVD BR A performance film as profound and ebullient as David Byrne and Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense should only happen - dare we say it - once in a lifetime. Yet with American Utopia, an end-of-run staging of Byrne’s Broadway show directed by Spike Lee, the former Talking Heads frontman has delivered one more milestone in the concert movie cannon. Between a peerless setlist of the band’s crowd-pleasers, solo work and collaborations, Byrne - besuited, barefoot, and openly off-kilter - speaks self-deprecatingly about the things that matter to him, from voting and connections to crisps. Behind the camera, Lee obliterates the audience divide with intimate framing of Byrne and his 11-strong band,…

WHY DO SO few movies end in a kiss these days? We’re not short of meet-cutes but a lot of contemporary screen romances care more about what happens after the first kiss, the butterflies-in- your-stomach moment soon sidestepped in favour of a study of the mechanics of a relationship. Ernst Lubitsch’s glorious 1940 movie, The Shop Around The Corner, doesn’t do this. It’s a perfect feelgood love story because it knows exactly how to end. Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and Clara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) are two shop clerks at Matuschek and Company, a leather-goods store in Budapest. They are spending the Christmas season each writing love letters to a mysterious pen pal - and they, of course, don’t realise they are writing to each other. Kralik is the first to…

LEO BILL MIGHT not seem like a conventional romcom star, but Rare Beasts – Billie Piper’s directorial debut, in which he stars – isn’t a conventional romcom. Pete (Bill) and Mandy (Piper) are a pair of messy coworkers-turned-lovers, and both bring their fair share of baggage to the relationship: she’s a single mother trying to figure out what she wants in a relationship, while he’s abrasive at best, misogynistic at worst. The opening scene epitomises the dynamic perfectly: Pete says he finds women “intolerable”; Mandy vomits in the street; Pete then declares they’ll be married within a year. “They’re utterly flawed,” Bill says with a chuckle. “Pete’s not a great guy, and I imagine there will be people who will absolutely hate him. But, for me, whichever part you play,…

AT THE HEIGHT of the first lockdown, Michael Sheen and David Tennant did what everyone had been doing: they had a chat on Zoom. The two stars workshopped some ideas and the result was Staged, a six-part series for the BBC about two fictionalised versions of Sheen and Tennant struggling and failing to rehearse a play. With a second series imminent, Empire jumped on a Zoom call with the pair – for what, it has to be said, felt like a spin-off episode of the show. How has 2020 been for both of you? David Tennant: Well, it was not as advertised in January, that’s for sure [laughs]. The great joy of it, though, is that we’ve got to do Staged twice, which was a thing that didn’t even exist…

WHERE? Cape Town, South Africa WHEN? 28 January 2020 WHY? Because Kevin Macdonald (Touching The Void, The Last King Of Scotland) has assembled a killer cast including Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tahar Rahim to tell the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. After being falsely aligned with al-Qaeda, Slahi was detained for 14 years at Guantánamo Bay without charge. WHAT DID YOU SEE? Guantánamo Bay. Well, a pretty intimidating replica, built from the ground up with Slahi’s input. “If there’s any misbehaving, you will be put in a detention cell,” jokes the first AD, and Foster advises slapping on some sun-screen while having her lipstick reapplied. With temperatures hitting the mid-20s by 10am and uniformed extras wilting over their pastries, it’s not a bad shout. WHAT WAS BEING FILMED?…

Do you have a nickname? My wife calls me ‘Beaver’, or ‘the Beav’. Being American, she thinks I’m a grown-up version of the boy from Leave It To Beaver. She grew up with that programme, but I’ve not seen it, so I’m scared to do so in case I don’t like the kid. When were you the most starstruck? I think once in my life. It was about 1970 and a friend of ours in London was having a dinner party. We all arrived at his house in Mayfair and he said, “I’ve got an extra guest for dinner tonight, a friend of mine: Marlon Brando.” I think my jaw dropped. He’s my favourite actor. After the dinner, Marlon said, “We’re all going out to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club.” You…

OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Eugene Ashe CAST Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Aja Naomi King PLOT Five years after they fell in love in 1957, a chance encounter sees jazz musician Robert (Asomugha) reconnect with aspiring TV producer Sylvie (Thompson). But will their new circumstances keep them from a second chance at a happily ever after? A PERIOD DRAMA with Black people at its centre is usually a guarantee that race and bigotry will be the dominant factors of the story. There is value in the If Beale Street Could Talks and Selmas, of course, but it’s disheartening that there hasn’t been nearly as many movies set way back when that focus on Black characters pursuing love, happiness and career dreams. That’s a big…

OUT 25 DECEMBER (DISNEY+) CERT PG / 100 MINS DIRECTORS Pete Docter, Kemp Powers CAST (VOICES) Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Richard Ayoade, Angela Bassett PLOT Finally getting a big break, jazz musician and teacher Joe Gardner (Foxx) then falls down a manhole. On the verge of death, he finds himself in The Great Before, a place where souls are assigned personalities. From there, he finds himself embarking on an even more unexpected journey. AN EVER-CHANGING genre mish-mash, Soul is an unpredictable box of curveballs, mixing slapstick and sentimentality with big ideas. Generally there are two types of Pixar films – the ones that are really for the kids, and then the ones for all of us, the ones that plug away at more philosophical concerns. Early on, a character here…

OUT NOW (CINEMAS/NETFLIX) CERT 12/132 MINUTES DIRECTOR Ryan Murphy STARRING Meryl Streep, James Corden, Jo Ellen Pellman, Ariana DeBose, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells, Keegan-Michael Key, Kerry Washington PLOT Lesbian high-schooler Emma (Pellman) plans to attend her prom with a girl, so the head of the PTA shuts it down. Enter failing Broadway stars Dee Dee (Streep) and Barry (Corden) in search of positive publicity... IN RECENT YEARS, there’s been a spate of musicals that you’ll enjoy ‘even if you don’t like musicals’, like Hamilton with its astonishing word-wizardry, or the retro-cool La La Land. The Prom is no such musical. It is intensely, unabashedly, razzlingly, dazzlingly Broadway, a musical for people who love musicals, in which many of the songs are about musicals. Anyone allergic to such things need not…

OUT NOW / SKY ATLANTIC EPISODES VIEWED 10 OF 10 SHOWRUNNER Aaron Guzikowski CAST Amanda Collin, Abubakar Salim, Niamh Algar, Travis Fimmel PLOT A pair of androids named Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) flee a dying Earth to raise a litter of human embryos on a harsh and distant planet. Further complications arise with the arrival of another band of Earth-born refugees: the fanatical, sun-worshipping Mithraic. GIVING RIDLEY SCOTT a sack of cash and allowing him to noodle the philosophy of the human condition via the medium of science-fiction is surely among the safest bets a studio can make. However, while Raised By Wolves’ android-centric story might evoke notions of Blade Runner, it’s Prometheus’ presence that is most keenly felt as we explore the barren, hostile landscape of…

WHETHER YOU CALL him Grogu, The Child, or his unofficial if slightly contentious nickname Baby Yoda, there’s one thing we can all agree on when it comes to the tiny green star of The Mandalorian: he’s cute as hell. Just about cute enough to make your heart burst, in fact. Look at him, chirping in pleasure as Mando whizzes through the air! Chuckle in glee as he uses the Force to steal a kid’s biscuits! Feel that warm and fuzzy glow as he nonchalantly chomps on the eggs of another specie- wait, what? If you were one of those cooing as The Artist Formerly Known As Baby Yoda worked his way through Frog Lady’s last remaining eggs in Chapter 10 - if you rolled your eyes and tutted and said,…

OBI-WAN KENOBI The most obvious candidate for a live-action TV show was always Obi-Wan. Ewan McGregor is still-popular casting from his role in the prequels, and this series will slot neatly into the middle of the missing 20 years in the Jedi Master’s life. Presumably his mission will partly involve keeping the secret of young Luke and Leia’s existence from their father, with Hayden Christensen (somehow) returning as Darth Vader. With The Mandalorian’s Deborah Chow directing and The Alienists Hossein Amini on screenwriting duties, we’re mostly hoping to learn how he came up with his cunning alias: ‘Ben’. ANDOR If you liked Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor but wish we’d seen more of him before his - spoiler - untimely end in Rogue One, good news! He and sarky battle droid…

I WAS ASKED to come over to Steven Spielberg’s house on a Saturday morning. He asked me if I’d like to write a movie about the Chicago 7 and I said, “Absolutely! You bet! Count me in!” After I left his house I called my father to ask him who the Chicago 7 were. I had a lot of work to do and not much time to do it because the last thing Steven said to me before I left his house was, “It’d be great if we could release the film before the election.” He was talking about the election of 2008. I read a dozen books about the riot in 1968 outside the Democratic convention in Chicago and the crazy conspiracy trial that followed. There was the trial…

11/6/93 The day it was released in the US $47 MILLION ITS OPENING WEEKEND IN THE US, THEN A RECORD $912 MILLION THE AMOUNT IT MADE IN ITS INITIAL RUN AT THE BOX OFFICE, MAKING IT THEN THE BIGGEST FILM OF ALL TIME $1.033 BILLION THE AMOUNT IT HAS MADE, THANKS TO RE-RELEASES. IT’S CURRENTLY 40TH ON THE ALL-TIME CHART 12,000 THE WEIGHT OF THE T-REX MODEL IN LBS 5 The number of times John Hammond says, “spared no expense” 8 THE NUMBER OF DINOSAUR SPECIES THAT APPEAR IN THE FILM (Brachiosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Gallimimus, Parasaurolophus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Velociraptor, and Alamosaurus, which can be seen as a skeleton) 3 NUMBER OF OSCARS WON (BEST VISUAL EFFECTS, BEST SOUND, BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING) 5 THE NUMBER OF CHARACTERS KILLED BY DINOSAURS IN THE MOVIE (WORKER IN RAPTOR PEN,…

Illustration: Jacey Chris: We’re here to talk about the work of Sean Connery. And there’s only one place to start: James Bond. Because when you talk about Connery, you have to talk about Bond. The two are inextricably linked. He was the first, he was the alpha. Helen: His ex-Bond work is his best. But he’s a great James Bond. He set the template. Connery’s Bond was the one by which all others are judged. Dan: I agree with Sidney Lumet, who said that Connery’s Bond was a great performance because Connery is not like Bond at all. Everyone thought he was basically playing himself. He wasn’t. He wasn’t close to Fleming’s conception of the character at all. Chris: The received wisdom is that it all comes to a head…

Getty Images PERHAPS IT STILL echoes 40 years on because Kubrick’s horror overflows with iconic images: the bloody elevator tide, the butchered twins, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) leering through the axe-smashed door. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” But the core of The Shining comes just before this beat: it is the fear in Shelley Duvall’s eyes, as her husband tries to break into the bathroom to kill her. Their son has already struggled out of the window into the snow-suffocated outside, but she can’t fit to follow. Instead we see her desperate but selfless: “Danny, I can’t get out. Run. Run and hide. Run. Quick!” Whether The Shining is the scariest film ever made is an eternal debate, but it certainly offers one of the most sustained depictions of fear. “It was only…

ACROSS 7 Director Miranda July’s recent take on a con movie (13) 8 It featured Daniel Day-Lewis in pugilistic mode (3,5) 9 Black American Princesses in short (1, 1, 1, 1) 10 This featured James Gandolfini in his final film role (3,4) 12 Matt who first appeared on screen in Mystic Pizza (5) 14 It featured the smartest guys in the room (5) 16 In which Elvis Presley was Spec.5 Tulsa McLean (1, 1, 5) 19 South African action film starring India Eisley and Samuel L. Jackson (4) 20 Musical that received 14 nominations at the 89th Oscars (2, 2, 4) 22 This seasonal release starred Emilia Clarke and Emma Thompson (4, 9) DOWN 1 Black comedy army hospital classic set in the Korean war (1, 1, 1, 1) 2…

WE WERE EXCITED! Disney were not shy about revealing new footage at their Investor’s Day presentation on 10 December; it’s not every day you get four shiny new Marvel trailers in one go. The first Loki trailer gave us lots of tantalising glimpses of what Tom Hiddleston’s God Of Mischief will be up to in a show Kevin Feige called a “crime thriller”. Most intriguingly of all, the end of the teaser sees Loki returning to Asgard via Bifrost: who - or what - will await him upon his return? WandaVision’s second trailer looked appropriately wild, too; in contrast, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier promises to be a much more grounded show, focusing on Steve Rogers’ BFFs, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Cap’s bequeathed shield…

AND THERE WAS us thinking Godzilla Vs. Kong would be cinema’s bloodiest battle in 2021. In early December, Warner Bros. shocked the film world by announcing that all of its upcoming blockbusters - a slate that includes The Matrix 4 and Dune, as well as the King of the Monsters’ impending showdown with Skull Island’s resident über-ape - would be released simultaneously in cinemas and on US streaming service HBO Max. The resulting drama was enough to make Kong himself blush. AMC, the US cinema chain which owns Odeon, confirmed, “We have already commenced an immediate and urgent dialogue with the leadership of Warner.” Reports surfaced that many of those involved in the movies heading to HBO Max were given little advance warning, with The New York Times claiming major…

WHEN SAM NEILL isn’t battling dinosaurs, he’s hanging out with sheep. The actor owns a vineyard and farm in New Zealand, which – as well as producing the acclaimed Two Paddocks wine – is home to a menagerie of animals, including around 25 sheep, all named after former co-stars (including Jeff Goldblum the ram, and Susan Sarandon the ewe). That made him perfect for the role in his new film, Rams, where he plays a sheep farmer forced to hide his herd in his house after a disease sweeps his valley. He is not short on woolly wisdom, then. SHEEP DON’T MAKE GREAT ACTORS “We had some sheep that had been ostensibly trained prior to filming Rams. Sheep are only biddable to a certain extent. You never see a performing…

JOHN McTIERNAN HASN’T made a film since 2003’s Basic. But the director of some of the most beloved action movies of all time, whose career has been derailed by legal issues and a year in federal prison for perjury, refuses to give up. Back in 2014, he planned a sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair. That didn’t happen. Neither did DEA thriller Red Squad, or John Travolta dog-fighting drama Warbirds. As the 69-year-old behind Die Hard, Predator and The Hunt For Ped October tells Empire, though, he has a new project lined up. “It’s a Marxist gunfighter movie,” he says with a laugh. “Would you see it?” Why, yes, we would. Tau Ceti (“We may call it Tau Ceti Foxtrot, I’m not sure yet,” notes McTiernan) is named after a…

OUT 30 DECEMBER (CINEMAS) / 7 JANUARY (NETFLIX) CERT TBC / 126 MINS DIRECTOR Kernel Mundruczo CAST Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker, Benny Safdie, Iliza Shlesinger PLOT Bostonians Martha (Kirby) and Sean (LaBeouf) are expecting their first child. After tragedy strikes during their home birth, Martha becomes isolated and frozen in her grief - not just from Sean, but her entire family. Will prosecuting her midwife help her find her way back - if not to them, to herself? IT’S SEPTEMBER, AND construction engineer Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and his partner Martha (Vanessa Kirby) are preparing for the birth of their first child. Banners at the baby shower proclaim “It’s a girl”, before the couple head to pick up a car bought for them by Martha’s domineering mother…

OUT 15 JANUARY (CINEMAS / SKY CINEMA) CERT TBC / 96 MINS DIRECTOR Edward Hall CAST Dan Stevens, Isla Fisher, Leslie Mann, Judi Dench PLOT In 1930s England, crime novelist Charles (Stevens) is struck by writer’s block. He turns to a medium (Dench), who unexpectedly summons up the ghost of his first wife (Mann). She gives Charles the inspiration he craves but causes supernatural friction with his exasperated current wife Ruth (Fisher). THE TIME SEEMS apt for another revival of Blithe Spirit, with the popular resurgence of mystical practices from tarot-reading to sage-burning and witchcraft - all of which get a run-out, and a little send-up, in this 1937-set romp. Frequently revived on stage and most famously adapted for the screen by David Lean in 1945, Noel Coward’s play is…

OUT 26 DECEMBER CERT 15 / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Regina King CAST Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr PLOT On 25 February 1964, 22-year-old boxer Cassius Clay (Goree) celebrated a win with three friends: Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X (Ben-Adir), NFL legend Jim Brown (Hodge) and soul singer Sam Cooke (Odom Jr). All four were at a crossroads, and the conversations they had would be transformative. THERE’S THE HISTORY that’s recorded by news cameras, witnessed by crowds or noted down in official documents. And then there’s everything else that’s ever happened. It’s in this vast, “inspired by true events...” space that One Night In Miami exists, first as an awardwinning play, now a movie, and all of it rooted in a historical fact that once tickled…

OUT NOW (SKY ATLANTIC/NOW TV) EPISODES VIEWED 1 OF 2 DIRECTOR Sam Levinson CAST Zendaya, Colman Domingo PLOT On Christmas Eve in a quiet American diner, high-schooler Rue (Zendaya) meets her sponsor Ali (Domingo). Over the course of their meal, the pair dissect Rue’s drug addiction, which she has been battling throughout adolescence. A FEW ECHOED bars of Labrinth and Zendaya’s ‘All For Us’ open the first of two standalone chapters of Euphoria. It’s the song that accompanied the first season’s sorrowful final sequence, and neatly signals that we’re picking up here, with a debilitated Rue in the throes of a heartbreak-induced relapse. Euphoria was one of the most impactful and discussed shows of 2019. Created by a then fairly unknown Sam Levinson, the filmmaker applied a hyper-stylised aesthetic to…

CHAPTER 1 - ‘THE MANDALORIAN’ 1 HUTTESE The bar patron addresses our hero in the language of Jabba and his portly ilk. 2 SQUID FACE We first caught a glimpse of the tentacled Quarren in Return Of The Jedi in the form of Jabba’s accountant Tessek, also known as ‘Squid Face’. 3 THE KUBAZ The aardvark-schnozzed cab dispatcher is part of a race most famous for bringing us the shady Garindan, who dobbed in Luke and Ben to the Empire at Mos Eisley spaceport. 4 LIFE DAY The Mythrol complains he’s going to miss this event, celebrated by Chewbacca and family in the dire 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. 5 THE GUN Mando’s natty rifle (an Amban phasepulse blaster) is another nod to the Holiday Special, where Boba Fett (in…

Suit and tie by Dirty Pineapple, shirt by Rag & Bone, socks by London Sock Company and shoes by Angela Mitchell. On stage, on screen, on vinyl, Daveed Diggs crackles. He has a built-in vibrancy - constantly alert, he’s a big-brained energy drink, a wide-eyed one-man army. But it’s the voice that really cuts through. It sounds like metal. That voice was the making of him. He was a shy, awkward fourth-grader when he first realised what he could do. Every week a teacher had them memorise poems, and finally the ten-year- old Diggs stood up and recited one, projecting, exclaiming. His classmates laughed in all the right places; he loved it. He felt confident, empowered. More significantly, everybody was listening. It changed his life. “The meter and the cadence…

Camel coat: Mr P at mrporter.com. Sweater: Canali at mrporter.com. T-shirt and jeans: both Marks & Spencer, marksandspencer.com. Boots: Russell’s own. RUSSELL T DAVIES IS EXHAUSTED The story he’s had on his mind for decades is finally arriving on television, in the form of visceral, angry, funny, transgressive five-part drama It’s A Sin, and he’s still coming to terms with it. When Empire meets Davies, 57, in a London hotel bar, he’s still processing it. “I think I’m stunned that, having wanted to write this for about 30 years, we’ve actually made it,” he explains. “And now I’m a little bit bereft.” Once he gets going, though, digging deep into the show’s long difficult, glorious birth, he doesn’t seem bereft at all. He’s burning with excitement and pride, in fact,…

“WELL, ALEX, I’M in New York,” says Martin Scorsese, as if it needed saying: through his office window, Manhattan towers around him. The city is in his bones, and throughout our video conversation, slices of his life, much of it from his youth, crop up - the sights, the sounds, the smells - and, of course, the wiseguys, whose behaviour he’s been studying for decades. In The Irishman, his 2019 adaptation of Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, based on confessions from real-life labour union official Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and his relationship with union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), he returned to the crime genre, but from a different vantage point. This time, he would explore its corrosive effect on a person’s soul. Taking a break…

SOME OF THEM wouldn’t have been able to conjure when they’d last seen each other. Years, certainly. Decades, maybe. But now they’d all come together, in the middle of a global pandemic, on the Paramount studio lot in Los Angeles. They were there to see a film they’d acted in some 30 years before, at the request of their director, Francis Ford Coppola. Apart from it wasn’t quite the same film. “When the film was over, they were all in tears,” he says of the likes of Al Pacino, Diane Keaton and Andy Garcia. “They found the ending so moving. Having the cast endorse it means a lot to me because I’m very fond of all those people.” He’s clearly still very fond of their characters too, and one in…

GEORGE CLOONEY: “My favourite movie is Network. Paddy Chayefsky was a brilliant writer. There’s the scene with Ned Beatty going, ‘There is no Soviet Union. There is no China. There is only Exxon and AT&T.’ It is such a brilliant speech. Everything Paddy Chayefsky wrote about in that movie came true. It was supposed to be a joke! I screened that movie for a bunch of young people, and told them it was a comedy and they said, ‘We love the movie, but it’s not a comedy!’ The idea when he wrote it, that the anchorman could be the entertainer, was impossible. You couldn’t imagine it. ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’ - how far is that from Trump? It’s crazy.” INT. CONFERENCE ROOM…