Empire January 2023

HUNG OUT WITH CATE BLANCHETT Empire’s Olly Richards spoke to Cate Blanchett this month for TÁR — her performance is already being spoken of as an Oscar frontrunner. We also enlisted Mary McCartney to photograph her at Abbey Road Studios. See page 80. CRACKED THE CASE WITH RIAN JOHNSON Empire’s Chris Hewitt spoke to writer-director Rian Johnson this month for Glass Onion, the latest Benoit Blanc whodunnit. If you, too, suspect foul play, listen to the interview in an upcoming episode of the Empire Podcast — and read our glowing review of the film on page 32. HOSTED A LORD OF THE RINGS SPECIAL SCREENING We hosted an epic finale episode screening of The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power and a Q&A with the showrunners and cast,…

I OCCASIONALLY THINK back to an ancient relic that mesmerised me in my childhood. A black VHS case, which rested on a shelf near the family TV, it had on its front lurid art of a hissing snake, an ancient arch, a mystical box and, square in the centre, a grinning man brandishing a whip. It was pretty damn cool. And it turned out that the film inside — Raiders Of The Lost Ark — was even damn cooler. From the exotic start (hairy spiders!) to the wild finale (gloopy faces!), it was non-stop exciting, but also hilarious, warm and, well, magical. No movie I’d ever seen felt quite so alive. Decades on, Raiders hasn’t aged one bit. And while its star has, it hasn’t slowed him down. We’ve all…

NOT TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL I’m a secondary English teacher and I take my issues of Empire into school. My students love reading about the latest Netflix hit or Marvel movie. We have reading lessons once a week and they now ask every time if I have the latest edition — they even argue over who gets to look at it first. I can tell you as a teacher how rare but special this is. Thank you for continuing to fuel their passion for film and reading! AAISHAH RAUF, VIA EMAIL Aaishah, thank you for encouraging the next generation to love films — and our mag. Have a Picturehouse membership on us. And to your students: stay in school, kids! None of us at Empire ever skived off to watch…

SOME SUPERHEROES HAVE legendary foes. Spider-Man, Batman and the X-Men, say, have no shortage of nefarious ne’er-do-wells to pit their wits against. And then, on the other side of the coin, is Ant-Man. Marvel’s mightiest mini-Avenger may have been around since the ’60s, but even seasoned comic-book fans might struggle to name more than two classic Ant-Man villains. There’s the guy with the yellow jacket (whose name, helpfully, is Yellowjacket) and… no, it’s gone. This is something of which Peyton Reed was aware when he sat down to figure out Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, the third MCU movie to follow Paul Rudd’s tiny titan. “It felt like I wanted to pit Ant-Man against an all-timer antagonist,” he tells Empire. And they don’t come much more all-timey than Kang The…

IF STEVEN SODERBERGH hadn’t been replaced as the director of Moneyball, Magic Mike may never have come to be. Instead of helming the Brad Pitt-fronted sports movie (eventually directed by Bennett Miller), the filmmaker moved onto Haywire and, while speaking to star Channing Tatum, saw instant opportunity in a throwaway comment. “It’s crazy,” Soderbergh tells Empire. “Just one sentence. He said to me, ‘Oh yeah, I’m working on this idea of when I was a stripper in Tampa when I was 19.’” Two films, a stage production and a reality-TV show later, the pair are embarking on the final chapter in the Magic Mike franchise: Magic Mike’s Last Dance. It’s been a journey that’s taken up over a decade of their lives, and that began with an important lesson for…

IF YOU LOVED... THE ENGLISH THE SHADOW LINE BRITBOX Years before he created The English, writer/ producer/director Hugo Blick made a string of ambitious dramas for the BBC, starting with this expert conspiracy thriller in 2011. The Shadow Line also features vivid roles for Stephen Rea and Rafe Spall, who both went on to star in The English. Spall plays Jay Wratten, the psychotic nephew of a drug baron; Rea is the enigmatic, soft-spoken villain-in-chief, Gatehouse. They’re both embroiled in a high-level police investigation led by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s troubled Inspector Gabriel, which plays out in enthralling, operatic style. A TV drama classic. EMPIRE PRIME VIDEO The English is a rare foray into TV drama for Emily Blunt since this 2005 American network TV take on ancient Rome, not to be…