Empire March 2023

This month’s exclusive subscriber cover by Murugiah TURN TO PAGE 10 FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO SUBSCRIBE Empire ISSN 0957-4948 (USPS 6398) is published every four weeks by H Bauer Publishing Ltd, Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA United Kingdom. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Periodicals Postage Paid at Brooklyn, NY 11256. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Empire, Air Business Ltd, c/o World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Subscription records are maintained at Bauer Media, Subscriptions, CDS Global, Tower House, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, Leicester LE16 9EF, United Kingdom. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent.…

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Well, we’re now in the sci-f-isounding 2023, and surely are all due robot dogs any day now. Until they arrive, a huge thank you for joining us for another year. Empire is one big family, as Vin Diesel would say if he were typing this (while swigging a fridge-fresh Corona), which makes us all relatives. Sorry we didn’t get you anything for Christmas, but we do promise to do our absolute best to entertain you over the next 12 months, while delivering state-of-the-art movie and TV news, and striving to affix the correct number of stars to every new release. If there’s anything you’d like us to be doing differently, do drop us a line at letters@empiremagazine.com. Also: Happy New Phase! Thanos may be space-dust, but a…

ON THE NEW BARBIE TRAILER: OH GOD, I’M GONNA HAVE TO GO SEE A BARBIE FILM, AREN’T I? WILLIAM DOYLE How exactly does one eat one’s human snack “bones and all”? Are said bones left until the end (like Brussels sprouts) after what I can only assume are the more palatable organ-y bits? Or, God forbid, might they add some sort of perverse, crunchy texture to the meaty mouthfuls? Perhaps Empire’s own dark soul, Ben Travis, could provide some clarity on this. BRADLEY NEALE, VIA EMAIL Lawyers representing Ben Travis would like to point out that this letter is in reference to a running joke on the Empire podcast and that he is not, in fact, a cannibalistic serial killer whose lust for blood cannot be quenched. That blood around…

Last week, I saw Casablanca in a cinema for its 80th anniversary. It was the film that made me fall in love with the classics, when I first caught it on television a few years ago. Can confirm it’s even more magical on the big screen. Bogart is touching, Bergman is luminous and Claude Rains steals every scene he’s in. I started crying as soon as the first bars of ‘As Time Goes By’ played… KATIE HERRON, VIA EMAIL Few films are as genuinely, endlessly timeless, are they? As Rick might put it: we’ll always have Casablanca. I LOVE HOW TILDA SWINTON’S RULES OF LIFE ALWAYS SEEM TO BOIL DOWN TO: SURROUND YOURSELF WITH INTERESTING PEOPLE, BE UP FOR EVERYTHING, AND DON’T BE BORING. :) @CMRANAPIA…

Empire, I have a problem. As a massive horror fan, your preview of the new Evil Dead got me extremely excited. But it says the film comes out on 21 April and I’m due to get married that very same weekend. Any chance you could ask Lee and Sam and Bruce to nudge things up a week? My wife-to-be is also a huge horror nut but I think even she would be pissed if I didn’t show up to my own wedding. BEN ROBINS, VIA EMAIL We’ll put in a word, Ben. Have you considered holding the wedding in a cinema, though? Hope it goes well, wherever it is held — as a wedding present, have a Picturehouse membership on us, for you both to see Evil Dead Rise and…

MEET THE BEGINNING of the Guardians of the Galaxy’s end. Teased right at the end of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, but fully introduced in the upcoming Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, Adam Warlock is a genetically engineered being, super-strong, super-fast, super-you-name-it, created by the Guardians’ sworn enemies The Sovereign and grown in a cocoon for one purpose, and one purpose only. Namely, making the Guardians pay for the ultimate crime: stealing some batteries. (It’s a long story; see Vol. 2 for details.) “It’s kind of more complicated than that,” writer-director James Gunn tells Empire. “But he’s definitely not a good guy. What we’re seeing is the infant form of Warlock, newly out of the cocoon, and he does not understand life very well. He’s basically a baby.”…