Author: Empire

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Spike Lee and Denzel Washington get together and make a film, that movie is not to be missed. From Mo’ Better Blues to Malcolm X, He Got Game to Inside Man, the director-actor duo simply do not miss. And if the first teaser for Lee and Washington’s new joint, Highest 2 Lowest, is anything to go by then that hot streak is about to continue in style. A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Toshirô Mifune starrer High And Low, Lee’s latest — which also boasts A$AP Rocky, Ice Spice, Jeffrey Wright, and…

For the most part, Avatar: The Way Of Water was so titled for its focus on the oceans of Pandora – with Jake Sully, Neytiri, and their Na’vi children forced to flee the RDA and bed in with the aquamarine Metkayina clan. But the sequel could also have been named for the tears provoked by its final reel. The clash between Na’vi and man came with a major consequence: the death of Jake and Neytiri’s firstborn son, Neteyam, tragically cut down on the cusp of adulthood. It’s a loss that sent Neytiri into a fearsome rage against the RDA –…

They’ve done thriller with a touch of romance in Jan de Bont’s 1994 action classic Speed, and romance with a touch (yes, a very very light touch) of thriller in Alejandro Agresti’s 2006 supernatural weepy The Lake House, but now Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are reuniting to make an out and out romantic thriller at last. Yes, per THR’s reporting, Keanu and Sandy B are teaming up for the first time in nearly two decades to make an as-yet-untitled, “propulsive” new movie together for Amazon MGM Studios. Written by Jackie scribe and Zero Day co-creator Noah Oppenheim, Bullock and…

It had to happen: the Empire podcast has finally gone to hell — quite literally in this case, as this particular show is episode 666. Perhaps appropriately then, James Dyer is in the driving seat for this one, embracing this demonically anointed episode to bring you such thematically relevant discussions as a Mount Rushmore of movie Satans and an off-topic discussion as to why subtitles are also the devil’s work. (Editor’s Note: The opinions on subtitles expressed in this week’s episode of the pod are the podcasters’ own.) But that’s not all, because while Chris Hewitt isn’t here in body,…

Having proven himself bona fide matinée idol material with his magnetic turn as Oswald in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man last year, breakout star Adam Pearson has just set his next major role. Per Variety’s reporting, the actor has signed on to lead a new film adaptation of Bernard Pomerance’s Tony award winning play The Elephant Man, which uses the diaries of physician Dr. Frederick Treves as a foundation to explore the remarkable true story of Joseph Merrick. Not to be conflated with David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man, which did also centre around the life of the severely…

The first time Guy Ritchie and Jake Gyllenhaal teamed up, on 2023’s The Covenant, we got a bruising Afghanistan war drama that saw the Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels filmmaker dial back on his more explosive directorial impulses to deliver something low-key, introspective, and surprisingly subdued. We’d hazard a guess that those three descriptors will probably not apply to the dynamic duo’s next movie, which Deadline has today confirmed will be Road House 2, Amazon MGM Studios’ follow-up to Doug Liman’s boozy, bromantic 2024 brawl-em-up. Having racked up millions of minutes viewed after dropping on Prime Video last March,…

Somehow, it’s been almost a decade since our favourite band of criminally talented magicians, The Four Horsemen, last rode out in Jon M. Chu’s 2016 heist sequel Now You See Me 2. Now, in the year of our Lord 2025, Venom and Uncharted director has brought the band — J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) — back together for ingeniously titled threequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. And for their next trick, the Horsemen are enlisting a new generation of illusionists (Dominic Sessa! Ariana Greenblatt! Justice…

Riding high on the successes of war drama All Quiet On The Western Front and papal conspiracy thriller Conclave, filmmaker Edward Berger has had his name linked to all sorts of eyebrow raising projects — from Ocean’s 14 to a new Bourne movie. But while both of those particular whispers seem to have proven premature, it does look like Berger is set to work with Ocean’s alumni Brad Pitt after all, on a very different kind of joint to Steven Soderbergh’s heist flicks. According to Deadline, Berger will direct Pitt in an A24 adaptation of The Riders, Australian author Tim…

Just days after Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos boldly told TIME that the theatrical release model is “outdated” and stated on behalf of film lovers that “they’d like to see movies at home, thank you,” this weekend’s box office figures tell a very different story about the vitality of the bricks-and-mortar cinema experience. In the best end-of-April weekend cinemas have seen post-COVID, Ryan Coogler’s audacious vampire-musical-thriller Sinners and the 20th anniversary re-release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith have led the charge, with the former taking another $45 million bite out of the domestic box office to bring…

Brat winter will have to wait: Greta Gerwig has found the White Witch to lead her upcoming Netflix Narnia movie and it’s not who we all thought. As you may recall, back in March we shared news that ‘Guess’ singer and pop megastar Charli XCX was circling the White Witch role in Gerwig’s blockbuster new C.S. Lewis adaptation, though trade sources were quick to add that a specific role hadn’t been 100% settled on at the time. Just as well they did, because THR are now reporting that Emma Mackey, star of Sex Education and Gerwig’s last movie, Barbie, is…