Author: Empire

This week’s Empire Podcast features two cracking interviews with two directors at two very different stages of their career. First, actor-turned-director Jack Huston sits down on Zoom and talks to our very own Chris Hewitt about how he managed to make his directorial debut, the black-and-white drama Day Of The Fight, about recruiting Joe Pesci for a supporting role, and about the influence of his famous grandfather, John Huston, on his craft and love of film. [26:52 — 47:11 approx.] Then, rounding out our one-two punch of filmmaker chats, Helen O’Hara sits down with the great Bong Joon Ho and…

Pop quiz, hotshot: What happens if you take the co-director of Shin Godzilla, give him the premise of Speed and the bones of the classic 70s Japanese action thriller that inspired it, and stump up some serious Netflix moolah to let him fully off the leash? Answer: Bullet Train Explosion. Yes, having gotten his kaiju on with big lad twofer Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman over the last near-decade, filmmaker Shinji Higuchi’s latest is an incredibly does-what-it-says-on-the-tin titled Netflix remake of Jun’ya Satô’s 1975 joint Bullet Train. The set-up is simple — there’s a bomb hooked up to a Shinkansen…

Back in October, we shared the very exciting if ever so slightly head-frazzling news that Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s 2019 horror-comedy Ready Or Not has a sequel in the works at Searchlight Pictures, with star Samara Weaving set to return as shotgun-toting final girl Grace. Since then, it’s been pretty much radio silence from the Radio Silence boys as they tinker away at their latest chiller — until now. Per Deadline’s reporting, the horror movie maestros are set to reteam with Abigail star Kathryn Newton on Ready Or Not 2. Much like the plot for Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin’s sequel,…

Something strange — well, stranger than the usual Ghostface stabby-stabby antics — is going on in Woodsboro. As production ramps up on Kevin Williamson’s upcoming Scream 7, the last few weeks have seen both Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher and Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger confirmed to be making a comeback in the slasher saga’s seventh instalment, despite both having been pretty clearly killed off when we saw them last. And now, per Deadline’s reporting, we’re getting word that David Arquette’s fan favourite Deputy Dewey Riley is returning to the fray too as the horror franchise continues to bring back its dead.…

After a chaotic and, at times unpredictable awards season, it all came down to this –– the big show. Hosted by Conan O’Brien, the 97th Academy Awards happened Sunday evening in Los Angeles, and Anora emerged as Best Picture. With a surprising sweep of several major categories –– also including Best Director, Original Screenplay and Editing for filmmaker Sean Baker (who becomes the first person to win four Oscars in one night) and a somewhat surprising win for star Mikey Madison over Demi Moore –– Anora became the little indie that could. This was a year that the academy members…

So there we have it — the 2025 Oscars have been and gone! And now, as the dust settles on the 2025 Academy Awards, Anora mini-sweep and all, we leave in testament to another crazy old year of golden statuette doling our live blog of the night exactly as it all played out. As has become tradition, we here at Team Empire were with you through the wee small hours of the morning for every single award, every single winner, every single live performance, and every single unmissable moment as it happened. The winners and snubs will be discussed for…

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t get stung — this article contains signposted spoilers for The Beekeeper. Some buzzy news for your Friday morning! Following the global box office success of last year’s David Ayer and Jason Statham action thriller The Beekeeper, The Stath’s assassin-turned-apiarist-turned-assassin-again Adam Clay is set to make a busy (probably murderous) bee of himself once again in Miramax’s The Beekeeper 2. And what’s more, per Deadline’s reporting, Indonesian action filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto (Nobody 2, The Shadow Strays) is making a beeline for the director’s hotseat and will be the man calling the shots on the upcoming sequel. We know…

The latest episode of the Empire Podcast is brought to you on a challenging week, one in which we have sadly had to bid farewell to some incredibly talented souls — Buffy The Vampire Slayer star Michelle Trachtenberg, Star Trek producer Roberto Orci, and the great Gene Hackman, who passed away at the age of 95 along with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their family dog. Chris Hewitt, James Dyer, Alex Godfrey, and Helen O’Hara take a moment to discuss these monumental losses in this week’s episode, but will convene to pay more in-depth tribute to Hackman in particular on…

Having burst onto the scene as resistance fighter Rose Tico in Star Wars sequels The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, and then followed that straight up with a starring role in 2021’s Raya And The Last Dragon, Kelly Marie Tran has been scratching her acting itch in a variety of indie and lower key projects over the last few years. In her next movie, Shai Ngo’s Hulu bound horror joint Control Freak, Tran will be scratching a far more literal itch — or at least trying to — as Val, a motivational speaker who finds her bonce being…

Legendary American actor and two-time Oscar winner Gene Hackman has died at the age of 95, it has been confirmed. The screen veteran, star of such films as The French Connection, Unforgiven, The Royal Tenenbaums, and the original Superman, was found dead alongside his 63-year-old wife Betsy Arakawa and the couple’s dog at the couple’s Santa Fe home late on Wednesday afternoon, per The New York Post. A character actor in the mould of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and James Cagney, Hackman — over the course of an acting career spanning five decades, 85 movies, and dozens more plays and…