Author: Empire

Good news for fans of big video game brawls. Not only do you have Mortal Kombat II to look forward to on the big screen later this year, but another of gaming’s all-time-great fighters is about to level up for cinemas. Street Fighter is on the way, ready to bring Capcom’s outlandish side-scrolling punch-em-up to the movies, and it looks to be going all-out in bringing the games’ super-stylised world into a new medium. Check out the first trailer: We’ve got Ryu and Chun-Li, Balrog and Guile, and a whole load of other beloved favourites. We have that culture-permeating ‘Perfect!’ sound effect. And, yes: we have…

With Godzilla Minus One — excuse us, the Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One — writer/director/VFX artist Takashi Yamazaki brought terror to Tokyo, pitting the atomic might of Gojira against the heroic spirit and heart of kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) in a creature feature for the ages. Now, three years later, we’re about to get monsters in Manhattan as Yamazaki brings cinema’s favourite septuagenarian lizard — bigger, badder, and frankly more terrifying looking than ever before — to New York in hotly anticipated sequel Godzilla Minus Zero. And you can check out a freshly dropped teaser trailer for the incoming…

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s a buzzy bit of casting news for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman sequel, Man Of Tomorrow, actually. Following a frenetic few weeks of whispers, rumours, and counter-rumours about who may be set to play alien anti-heroine Maxima in Gunn’s sophomore directorial effort in the DCU, the movie has found its alien queen (no, not that Alien Queen.) Per Variety’s reporting, Splitsville and Andor star Adria Arjona has officially signed on to play Maxima in Man Of Tomorrow as pre-production ramps up on the superhero sequel. As has been well publicised and…

Though Katniss Everdeen’s story ended a while ago, there are plenty of Hunger Games tales still to be told. Author Suzanne Collins still has much she wants to say – given the state of, well, everything right now – and has continued to explore the dystopia she created in various prequel novels, themselves adapted for the big screen. Now, after The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, which dialled the clock back to the 10th Hunger Games, Sunrise On The Reaping will be presenting the 50th edition of the kiddie death-match – perhaps its most brutal ever, and the one that…

Ready for the truth to be revealed? Disclosure Day is coming, Steven Spielberg’s new summer blockbuster set to spill extra-terrestrial secrets – and the new issue of Empire has the first word on the master’s latest original. You’ll find the magazine on newsstands from Thursday April 9 – and you can order a copy online here right now – but first, here’s a sneak peek inside its pages. Steven Spielberg Over 50 years ago, he invented the blockbuster. Now Spielberg is back with a fresh one – and he sits down for a major new interview, revisiting his sci-fi classics,…

Ok, first things first. Let’s get it out of the way. Yes, the Empire Podcast team — Chris Hewitt, Helen O’Hara, James Dyer, and John Nugent — spend a great deal of this week’s podcast answering a listener question about great movie quartets. They also spend a great deal of time, in the Movie News section, talking about The Lord Of The Rings: The Hunt For Gollum. And yes, despite all that, they spectacularly fail to mention Bilbo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin in the former category. So, just letting you know that now lest you wish to shout at your…

Fans of animation are no strangers to Brad Bird. He brought to life Vin Diesel’s super-sized robot in The Iron Giant, gave us one of the best superhero films of the 2000s with The Incredibles, and introduced audiences to the internet’s favourite chef Remy in Ratatouille. But his latest project actually dates back to before all of those films, having been gestating in the director’s mind for more than 30 years. The project in question is Ray Gunn, a blend of 1940s noir detective films and sci-fi that has just revealed its first images along with its voice cast. Check…

Just in case there was any remaining doubt that video game adaptations are the new comic book movies, another one’s strafing our way — and it’s a biggie! This evening, THR is reporting that Sony’s Columbia Pictures are gearing up to bring Hideo Kojima’s stealth combat franchise Metal Gear Solid to the big screen. And, what’s more, the studio has already found one of the hottest directorial duos around to make it: Final Destination Bloodlines duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. With stock in Lipovsky and Stein rising following the critical and commercial success of last year’s Final Destination…

We’ve got an itch for an action movie threequel — and Netflix has a Rake to scratch it! Yes, after technically dying in Sam Hargrave’s Extraction, and having gotten better in testosterone-fuelled follow-up Extraction 2, Chris Hemsworth’s Aussie merc Tyler Rake is officially coming back for a new mission with the ingeniously titled Extraction 3. And what’s more, per Deadline’s reporting, we know that he’s not coming back alone: Sam Hargrave is returning to the directorial hotseat, while Rake’s BFF/manager Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and mysterious ‘Man In The Suit’ Alcott (Idris Elba) are also re-entering the fray on-screen. Having somehow…

You could never accuse David Lowery of being one-note. The filmmaker began his career with a riff on Bonnie and Clyde in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and has since given us arthouse spookfests (A Ghost Story), Earthy-toned Disney remakes (Pete’s Dragon, Peter Pan & Wendy), and existential epic fantasies (The Green Knight). Oh, and he directed episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew too. Next up? He’s going full pop star psychodrama in Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway as a legendary pop icon, reconnecting with Michaela Coel’s mysterious dressmaker after they parted ways years previously. The film boasts true pop cred,…