Author: Empire

If you have any interest in the film festival circuit, you’ve probably heard about Na Hong-jin’s bonkers Korean monster-action epic Hope. The film had a huge response following its premiere, and marks a departure from the director’s previous films, the thrilling The Chaser and certified horror banger The Wailing. This time around, Hong-jin has gone all-out with a relentless action spectacle. The film has already had one South Korea’s biggest film openings of 2026 following its July 15 release. The good news is that you won’t have to wait long to see Hope, because it now has a UK release…

It’s not long until we return to the Wizarding World this Christmas, with HBO’s new take on Harry Potter heading to TV screens. However, those in the gaming world have been eagerly awaiting news of a follow-up to 2023’s open-world role-playing game Hogwarts Legacy — a game that allowed everyone to live out the childhood fantasy of attending the famous school of witchcraft and wizardry, but, most importantly, let you fly around on a broomstick to your heart’s content. Although rumblings of a sequel have been around since the original launch, it seems Warner Bros. has officially confirmed that a…

Every Toy Story movie has its tear-jerking moment. Maybe several of them. And Toy Story 5 is no different, using its Jessie-centric focus to revisit one of the most gut-wrenching sequences in the series’ history. Andrew Stanton’s latest sequel continues the growth of kid Bonnie, who looks set to abandon her toys when everyone around her is consumed by tablets and tech – even though her new Lilypad doesn’t bring her the same joy and fulfilment as Jessie, Buzz, and the rest of the gang. In the course of the plot, through a series of misadventures, Jessie and Bullseye end…

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the multiverse came calling. Because, the ultimate geek crossover is on the way. When Avengers: Infinity War dropped in 2018, it was dubbed the “most ambitious crossover event of all time” – and the same could perhaps be said for Star Wars | Marvel: Hope Assembles, a comic book series in which the worlds of, you guessed it, Marvel and Star Wars collides. The five-issue season, which will launch to mark the 50th anniversary of Star Wars in 2027, is being written by somebody who knows both of those worlds…

To me, my X-Men casting news — and this one’s a bit of a Heartstopper, folks. As Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the growing Avengers: Doomsday hype, and some recent mutant-based developments in the MCU have left us asking “Is Marvel back?”, it looks like Marvel Studios is busying itself assembling an exciting (X-citing?) team for Jake Schreier’s upcoming X-Men movie. Following last week’s news that Samara Weaving is reportedly set to play Emma Frost in the Thunderbolts* director’s latest, Deadline is now reporting that Heartstopper breakout Kit Connor is Marvel’s pick to play Scott Summers — aka Cyclops — in…

They say that any movie is only as good as its villain — and by that metric, it looks like Wes Ball is gunning for an all-timer with his upcoming live-action The Legend Of Zelda movie. Just over a year after the Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes filmmaker’s cinematic trip to Hyrule cast youngsters Bo Bragason and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as its Zelda and Link, and a good nine months on from our first official look at Nintendo and Sony’s fantasy epic, Deadline is reporting that Australian actor Uli Latukefu has landed the role of iconic villain Ganondorf…

It’s been fourteen years and five films since Christopher Nolan scored his last billion dollar hit at the box office with The Dark Knight Rises. Now however, in news that at this point will surely come as a surprise to approximately nobody, Nolan has scaled that billion-dollar mountain once more, with Variety reporting that the British auteur’s Homeric epic The Odyssey has just sailed past the major milestone in a frankly astonishing three weeks flat. With Spider-Man: Brand New Day swinging into cinemas just last week and landing a record-shattering $932 million opening weekend, it was always going to be…

This week’s episode of the Empire Podcast sees Taika Waititi, director of Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Zoom in for a cracking chat with Chris Hewitt about that movie’s tenth anniversary re-release, his feelings about the loss of the great Sam Neill, the status of his What We Do In The Shadows sequel, New Zealand PSAs, and more. Either side of that, Chris is joined in the podbooth by Helen O’Hara and John Nugent to answer a listener question about the implications of Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s record-breaking box office open; discuss the week’s movie news, including the Violent Night 2…

Fun, frothy, dino-filled and star-studded, last year’s Jurassic World Rebirth may not exactly have been a game changer for the Jurassic Park saga, but it was a ton of fun and it did make a none-too-shabby $872 million at the box office. By almost any metric, you could safely call the seventh instalment in everyone’s favourite fossil-fuelled franchise a roaring success. But per Deadline’s reporting, the next _J_urassic World will need to, uh, find a way without director Gareth Edwards, who has left the project due to that old dragon “creative differences”. Insiders tell Deadline that Edwards left the project…

It’s something of a Hollywood tradition – when a new film comes out and breaks all kinds of records, the previous record-holders pass the baton courtesy of a custom piece of art. For instance, James Cameron congratulated the team behind Avengers: Endgame on its Earth-shattering box office haul with an Iron Man / Avatar crossover image; and now, the Russo Brothers are nodding to another Marvel victor. While Spider-Man: Brand New Day has a good way to go before becoming the most successful film of all time, it did just have the highest-grossing opening weekend ever in the US, earning…