Tabla de contenidos para August 2025 en Empire

ONE DAY IN 1981, the power in Burbank, Los Angeles, abruptly went out. The source of the brownout was a mystery, until the electric company traced the surge to an address on South Buena Vista Street. It was Walt Disney Studios — specifically the soundstage where a movie titled Tron was being assembled. And so peculiar was the way this story was being brought to life, with vast amounts of lighting flooding the sets to aid a newfangled digital process, that it temporarily darkened large swathes of a city. “This sounds really far out,” Jeff Bridges, the star of Tron, had told its director, Steven Lisberger, when first pitched the project. He was not wrong. The results pushed cinema to its limits, imagining a visually sensational, strikingly original world set…

AMAZING EVENTS EXCLUSIVE PODCASTS BESPOKE COVERS FREE CINEMA TICKETS EXCLUSIVE INVITES TO EVENTS CURATED BY THE EMPIRE TEAM THE ULTIMATE EMPIRE EXPERIENCE Reading the magazine is only the beginning. To get closer to Hollywood than ever before, join the Empire VIP Club. Screenings with A-listers in the house, our deep-dive Spoiler Special podcast, the magazine direct to your door with bespoke covers, plus free cinema tickets. All from £8.99 a month. Join us today! SIGN UP NOW: GREATMAGAZINES.CO.UK/EMPIREVIP OR SCAN THIS QR CODE £10 OFF WITH CODE EMPVIP10* VIP MEMBERSHIP Worth over £130! INCLUDES: Exclusive live events, including preview screenings and Q&As 13 print issues of Empire a year Choice of an annual Picturehouse Membership or a Cineworld regular Combo deal, with two cinema tickets** Access to the Empire Spoiler…

A MOMENTOUS CROSSOVER is coming… to comics. Ancient rivals Marvel Comics and DC are teaming up two of their best-loved characters for their first crossover in 21 years, since JLA/Avengers wrapped up in 2004. Deadpool/Batman #1 will emerge in September with Batman/Deadpool #1 due in November. The Merc With The Mouth versus the Dark Knight! It’s a tasty prospect, but could something similar happen on screen? Well, maybe. Marvel worked successfully with Sony on the Spider-Man films to crowd-pleasing effect, huge box-office results, and zero unresolved lawsuits. Personnel-wise, there are also bridges to be built. James Gunn of course worked for Marvel across three successful Guardians Of The Galaxy films (and a holiday special) before becoming head of DC Studios in 2022. He has clear affection for both universes, and…

DARTH VADER. JACK TORRANCE. THANOS. When considering the ranks of terrible cinematic dads, don’t forget Colonel Miles Quaritch, Avatar’s bastard-hard antagonist and biological father to Spider (Jack Champion), the human kid with close ties to the Sully family. And, according to actor Stephen Lang, Quaritch’s parental skills are unlikely to improve come the next instalment: Avatar: Fire And Ash. “Are things going to get all lovey-dovey?” he barks at Empire. “It’s doubtful, pal.” At the end of The Way Of Water, the pair went their separate ways, Spider rejoining the Sully clan having saved his father’s life in the heat of (sea) battle. Now circumstances force a reunion. “They reconnect out of necessity,” explains Lang. “Their connection is not a solo connection. There are times when everybody comes together on…

OKAY, WHAT IS AN ELDEN RING? It’s a game — widely considered to be among the best ever made — directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the man behind the famous Dark Souls series, and released in 2022. It is vast, difficult, and set in a huge open world called The Lands Between. You play an immortal being called a Tarnished, who wants to become a god. You also die. A lot. AND THE GAME IS WRITTEN BY GEORGE R.R. MARTIN, RIGHT? SO IT MUST HAVE A GREAT STORY. Sort of. George wasn’t so much author as vibes man on this one, with his contribution focused on worldbuilding, rather than an actual narrative. The story itself is incredibly opaque — in fact, the vast majority of the lore isn’t found through gameplay…

SITTING IN A room on the 11th floor of Battersea Power Station, Michael ‘Stormzy’ Omari sets down the vanilla yoghurt he’s been eating. He’s just admitted to — in Empire’s eyes at least — the ultimate movie sin. “I’m a psychopath,” he explains. “People say that I’m crazy because I watch films on my phone.” For one of Britain’s most prolific and philanthropic rappers — who alongside being a three-time Brit-winner provides Cambridge University scholarships for Black students — the rulebook can be rewritten a little. Although Stormzy had better start getting used to larger screens, not least because he’s just appeared in his first lead acting role. In short film Big Man, the 31-year-old stars as rapper Tenzman, whose stagnating career is reinvigorated after he takes a spontaneous day…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Len Wiseman CAST Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane Having stolen the show kicking SPECTRE ass in No Time To Die, Ana de Armas has shown action-hero promise for years; it’s only now, with John Wick spin-off Ballerina, that that early promise has come into full bloom. Once again, vengeance is the name of the game. with Eve Macarro (de Armas) set on a bloody path when her father is murdered. Ballerina is at its best when the bodies are dropping and there is a pleasingly rich amount of variety in Ballerina’s action — from flamethrowers to katana swords to ice skates. The narrative linking the action together is not quite as sophisticated, and the story generally a…

TALK ABOUT A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 113 MINS DIRECTOR Ilya Naishuller CAST Idris Elba, John Cena, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Carla Gugino, Jack Quaid, Paddy Considine PLOT A British Prime Minister (Elba) and a US President (Cena) are forced to put their differences aside when they become the targets of a terrorist. REMOVE A FEW mobile phones and gadgets and Heads Of State could believably be a relic of the 1980s. And that is absolutely its greatest strength. An old-school mismatched-buddy movie with apparently no ambitions other than to be a thoroughly fun time, it hits that rare undemanding-but-entertaining sweet spot that so many modern action-comedies miss. Early on, you might wonder if it’s misjudged its tone. The opening sequence, in which an undercover…

OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / CERT TBC / 103 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Pearce CAST Julianne Moore, Sydney Sweeney, Domhnall Gleeson, Kyle MacLachan Director Michael Pearce (Beast, Encounters) continues his run of eliciting excellent performances from top actors. This time, he tackles the story of grief-stricken Kate (Julianne Moore) and the malign influence of estranged drug-addict daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney). Pearce smartly lays the groundwork for an addiction drama, before switching gears into thriller territory when Claire’s villainous friend — or, perhaps, just dealer — Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) shows up. Some unlikely plot contrivances and repeated product placements feel a little galling, but for the most part this is an intelligent, sapphic-tinged and well-acted rural thriller, with Moore, Sweeney, and Gleeson all on fine form.…

WILL THIS NEW APPLE TV+ SHOW GET IN YOUR EYES? OUT NOW (APPLE TV+) / EPISODES VIEWED 9 OF 9 SHOWRUNNER Dennis Lehane  CAST Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Greg Kinnear, Rafe Spall, John Leguizamo PLOT Arson investigator Dave (Egerton) and troubled police detective Michelle (Smollett) work together to track down two prolific arsonists — but not all is as it seems. IF YOU’VE EVER found yourself needing a reminder to not leave a candle unattended, then Apple TV+ has the show for you: Smoke, a new thriller series that sees creator Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island) re-team with star and executive producer Taron Egerton, after their previous prison drama for the streamer, Black Bird. Egerton is Dave Gudsen: a gum-chewing former firefighter, current arson investigator and aspiring…

HERE BE LIVE-ACTION REMAKES OUT NOW / CERT PG / 125 MINS DIRECTOR Dean DeBlois CAST Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Peter Serafinowicz PLOT On the island of Berk, dragon-slaying is a way of life, although not for hopeless young Hiccup (Thames). Until he shoots down a rare Night Fury… 2010’S ANIMATED HOW To Train Your Dragon boasts a fun, sparky script and an unimprovable story about a lonely, damaged boy bonding with a lonely, injured dragon. This remake has, therefore, largely decided not to improve it, playing out a near-identical script with live human actors and calling it a day. It’s the Gus Van Sant’s Psycho of animation remakes. It is frequently soaring and gorgeous, but can’t take full credit for its…

THE FUTURE IS NOW. Forget Light Cycles, Jeff Bridges wants to talk about driverless cars. “Have you ridden in a Waymo yet?” A what now? “Driverless car!” he exclaims, with Bridgian exuberance, eyes lit up. “They have those in the States now. I just drove in one a little while ago. It’s the wildest thing. It made me think about my great grandchildren, if I live that long, saying to me, ‘Wait a minute, you mean you could actually drive your own little missile, you could control it?!’ Because I’m thinking, 20 years from now, everybody may be moving around via Waymo.” We’re 15 minutes into our conversation about Tron: Ares, the third film in a sporadic franchise that, because of the generational divide between each one, speaks to different…

WILL IT BE ANY COP? ONE OBJECT STRUCK fear into the hearts of interviewers around the world throughout the 1980s and ’90s. It was a contraption built by a golf pro in Oklahoma City for one purpose, and one purpose only. And whether you were David Letterman or Lorraine Kelly, it could be unleashed at any moment, derailing your careful line of questioning with a single well-timed parp. Yes, Leslie Nielsen’s Pooter Tooter, a handheld fart machine made of plastic and rubber, was a powerful force of chaos. And the late star played the wind instrument like a maestro, maintaining a poker face as he reduced audiences to roars of laughter and left talk-show hosts speechless. “I do not travel anywhere alone,” he told Conan O’Brien on live TV one…

“I WANT IT TO BECOME A FANTASY. I WANT IT TO BECOME JAMES BOND.”BOB ODENKIRK BOB ODENKIRK CAN BE (AND HAS BEEN) many things. He can be an actor, a writer, a producer, a director. He can be funny, charming, flinty, heartbreaking, devious, craven, depending on which movie or TV show or play he’s in. Yep, the list of all the things that Bob Odenkirk can be is long and varied. But there’s been a recent addition that nobody saw coming. “Bob Odenkirk,” says Timo Tjahjanto, his director on Nobody 2, “can be one scary motherfucker.” A couple of days later, Empire puts this to Odenkirk, who is at that moment in New York, just a few hours away from going on stage as Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene in a…

Mike Flanagan knows the word “feel-good” isn’t often associated with the apocalypse. Nor, to be honest, with his work as one of the era’s premier fright-masters; a writer-director whose oeuvre has so far included vampire priests (Midnight Mass), acid showers (The Fall Of The House Of Usher) and some of the most brutal small-screen deaths of all time (The Haunting Of Hill House). It’s not how you’d typically describe the icon of literary terror he’s becoming closely associated with, either. Flanagan’s latest film, The Life Of Chuck, adapted from a 2010 Stephen King novella, is the third time he’s brought the legendary author’s words to the screen, after Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, with new adaptations of Carrie and The Dark Tower also on the way. But The Life Of…

BEFORE DAN TRACHTENBERG entered the picture, the Predator franchise tended to adhere to a straightforward formula. Over three decades and four films (six including the Alien Vs. Predator outings), the routine was almost always the same: dreadlocked alien(s) cause mayhem in the present (or near-present)-day, before ultimately having their arse(s) handed to them by a group of musclebound, mostly male humans. That all changed with Prey. Trachtenberg’s superb 2022 actioner wound the Predator universe way back to the early 18th century, tracking a young Comanche woman as she defended her tribe from a brutal extraterrestrial hunter. And this year sees Trachtenberg pushing the dreadlockedalien envelope even further, with two new Predator films — the first of which (Killer Of Killers) is an animated anthology spanning the Viking era, feudal Japan…

Alex Godfrey (Features Editor): I feel like Ari Aster came out of nowhere and really scared and excited people with Hereditary. Then they loved Midsommar, which is a different kind of horror movie. Harry Stainer (Social Media Editor): It’s the best break-up movie. Alex: Exactly. With Beau Is Afraid and now Eddington he’s launched into a new phase. I feel like he was never going to be a straight-up horror guy. He’s just a fucking weirdo. Joanna Moran (Director Of Photography): I’m excited about this one because I don’t like horror films. So I can appreciate what you guys love about Ari Aster without needing years of therapy. Ben Travis (Deputy Online Editor): With Beau Is Afraid there was something really anxious and true and weird to it. Him applying…

“FUN” IS PERHAPS not the word that immediately springs to mind when you think of Darren Aronofsky’s oeuvre. The Brooklyn-born director has conjured numerous gut-punchingly brutal masterpieces — from Pi to Requiem For A Dream to Black Swan — but you’d be hard-pressed to describe any of them as a barrel of laughs. However, “fun” is absolutely the aim with his latest offering. “The state the world’s in right now… There’s a lot going on,” Aronofsky tells Empire. “So, I wanted to get back to the core ingredients that make movies great — entertainment and fun. I wanted to make something filled with joy and adventure.” That something is Caught Stealing — a 1998-set “crime caper”, centred on washedup baseball player Hank (Austin Butler), whose offer to cat-sit for a…

IT CONNECTS THE ORIGINAL HUNGER GAMES MOVIES AND THE PREQUEL The fifth chapter in Suzanne Collins’ hugely successful young-adult series is set 40 years after the events of prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes and 24 years before The Hunger Games. Reaping charts the origins of Haymitch Abernathy (played in the original films by Woody Harrelson). Set during the 50th Hunger Games, the new movie will follow 16-year-old rebel Haymitch (Joseph Zada) as he partakes in the brutal annual death-match hosted by the wealthy Capitol in order to control the surrounding impoverished districts. IT ADDRESSES FAKE NEWS Collins’ novel was announced in June 2024, with the author confirming that the plot, which sees Haymitch take on the Capitol from within the games, was inspired by society today. “The story…

ETHAN COEN AND Tricia Cooke have cracked something of a screenwriting formula: riotous genre homages with a lesbian twist and plenty of oddball characters. It began with last year’s queer road-trip movie Drive-Away Dolls, and now they return with Honey Don’t!, starring their newfound muse, Margaret Qualley. Playing a quick-witted private investigator, Qualley’s Honey sets out to uncover the connection between a series of strange deaths and a mysterious cult. Speaking to Empire, Coen and Cooke explain how they cooked up the players of their darkly comedic detective noir. THE PRIVATE EYE The pair had already written Honey Don’t! by the time they’d met Qualley for Drive-Away Dolls. They hit it off right away, and knew that they had to bring her back to play the titular detective. “We wanted someone…

FOR A WHILE there, it looked to Macon Blair like his second movie as a writer-director might actually be unreleasable. That’s what some commentators were saying about Blair’s remake of cult classic The Toxic Avenger — about a janitor (Peter Dinklage) who transforms into a mutant vigilante after a freak accident — which he completed back in 2022. “It was kind of scary and discouraging to have the movie on the shelf for that long,” he tells Empire. “Like, is this movie going to get Batgirled?!” Blair is perhaps now best recognised as Oppenheimer’s lawyer in Christopher Nolan’s bomb-buster. But he’s also an award-winning indie filmmaker, earning the Toxic Avenger gig from Legendary Pictures on the strength of his Coen-esque 2017 debut I Don’t Feel At Home In This World…

THE LONG WALK has been on a long walk. The dystopian novel was among the first written by Stephen King while he was still a student in the 1960s, published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It detailed a hellish and deadly walking competition in an alternative America, where 100 men compete to walk indefinitely without stopping, with only the last man standing allowed to survive. Multiple filmmakers have tried and failed to bring it to the screen — including George A. Romero and Frank Darabont — but all have failed. Some even considered it unfilmable. Until now. “I wasn’t aware of the fact that everybody had tried to make it over the course of 30 years,” chuckles screenwriter JT Mollner, who has finally broken the curse. “Which is…

“HOW ARE YOU still alive?” That, dear readers, is the question that Empire puts to Tom Cruise about Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Specifically, the film’s most audacious (and Guinness World Record-breaking) stunt, in which Ethan Hunt escapes from a burning plane via parachute, only for that parachute to then burn up, leading to Ethan free-falling through the clouds. Which, by extension, means that Tom Cruise was free-falling through the clouds. And he wanted very much to be in a position to answer questions like, “How are you still alive?” when the stunt was over. “That was a whole story unto itself,” Cruise tells us. “How do we do that? How do I film myself burning a parachute and then recovering?” The solution that Cruise, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, and…

TOP GUN: MAVERICK — ON LAND OUT NOW / CERT 12A / 156 MINS DIRECTOR Joseph Kosinski CAST Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies PLOT The boss of a failing Formula 1 team (Bardem) recruits a maverick former driver (Pitt) in an effort to turn things around. REMEMBER TOP GUN: Maverick? Joseph Kosinski’s big-screen triumph of 2022, which saw Tom Cruise and his co-stars actually flying in planes? With F1, Kosinski returns to capturing vehicular action with a level of commitment never seen before. This time, it’s the world’s fastest cars, and he’s swapped out one megawatt movie star in Cruise for another: Brad Pitt. Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a grouchy gambler who lives in his van and, after a horrifying accident crushed his dreams, constantly…

IF IT BLEEDS, THEY CAN KILL IT (REPEATEDLY) OUT NOW (DISNEY+) / CERT 18 / 90 MINS DIRECTOR Dan Trachtenberg CAST Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez, Michael Biehn PLOT The deadly, trophy-hunting Predator species takes on the toughest warriors from across human history: a Viking queen, a Japanese ninja, and an ace World War II pilot. IT’S HARD TO keep a secret in Hollywood these days. So when it was announced late last year that Dan Trachtenberg had directed not one but two new films in the Predator franchise, one completely hush-hush, the surprise was bigger than getting hit in the face with Old Painless. Trachtenberg was behind 2022’s Prey, arguably the best film in the series since the 1987 Arnie original, and now, it seemed, he was going…

THE NETFLIX MEGAHIT GOES OUT WITH A BANG OUT NOW (NETFLIX) / EPISODES VIEWED 5 OF 6 SHOWRUNNER Hwang Dong-hyuk CAST Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-joon, Im Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Park Sung-hoon PLOT Gi-hun (Lee) and his fellow survivors are forced to continue playing after their uprising fails, but help is on the way from some unlikely places. SQUID GAME GALLOPED out of the blocks when it premiered in 2021. Right off the bat, we saw the drowning-in-debt Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) coerced into a deadly game of Red Light/Green Light, with the first season massacring contestants in almost every episode, folding in organ-harvesting, sadistic gold-masked billionaire patrons, and one of the worst hair makeovers imaginable. Now in its third and final season, the South Korean dystopian sensation…

DAVID CRONENBERG IS THINKING ABOUT DEATH OUT 4 JULY / CERT 15 / 119 MINS DIRECTOR David Cronenberg CAST Diane Kruger, Vincent Cassel, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt PLOT A grieving tech pioneer (Cassel) is drawn into a conspiracy after his grave live-streaming software is hacked and his cemetery vandalised. “YOU’VE MADE A career out of bodies,” says Terry (Diane Kruger) to her brother-inlaw Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a widower hollowed out by his wife Becca’s (also Diane Kruger) death. This line will raise a smile for anyone even slightly familiar with the films of writer and director David Cronenberg, whose oeuvre, from The Fly to Crimes Of The Future, has always been profoundly concerned with matters of the flesh. In this latest complex and captivating outing, the master of the macabre…

JAY-FROM-INBETWEENERS VOICE: “OOOOH, FRIEEEEEEND!” OUT 18 JULY / CERT 15 / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Andrew DeYoung CAST Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer, Josh Segarra PLOT Craig (Robinson) becomes enamoured with his new neighbour Austin (Rudd). But when Austin breaks off their friendship, Craig spirals. FRIENDSHIP IS THE kind of film that will likely cause a physical reaction when watching: uncomfortably curled up into a ball, head in your hands, peering between your fingers when you feel brave enough. This is cringe comedy through and through, destined to have audiences squirming in their seats as if everyone arrived at the cinema in trousers a size too small — but Andrew DeYoung’s film is hilarious precisely because it is so gleefully deranged, taking full advantage of the well-established…

LIGHT CYCLES Basically a big, fat, space-age motorbike, the Light Cycle is Tron’s most indelible bit of iconography. Conceived by Steven Lisberger and designed by Syd Mead, these chunky digital hot-rods are geometric beauties, taking those right-angle turns like no-one’s business. But don’t drive into any light ribbons — you’ll die in a hail of neon (pretty, though). THE GRID “A digital frontier,” explained Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn in Tron: Legacy, featuring “clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like?… Freeways?” In short: yes. The Grid is where the magic happens. As terrifying as it is beautiful, once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. But it’s worth the trip, man. IDENTITY DISCS These glowing circular appendages, affixed to the back of your light…

“What a delightful way to spend a summer.” It’s 27 August 2024, and Pierce Brosnan is clearly content in the twilight of a long day’s filming on The Thursday Murder Club. We are chatting in the beautiful gardens of Englefield House, an imposing, impressive mansion in Theale, west of Reading. You might have seen it in X-Men: First Class, playing Xavier Academy, but today the Estate is doubling for the Kent retirement village of Coopers Chase, the heart of Richard Osman’s senior-sleuths-solve-crimes bestseller. Brosnan plays retired trade union leader Ron Ritchie, who, along with formidable former spy Elizabeth Best (Helen Mirren), compassionate ex-psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif (Sir Ben Kingsley) and sweet-natured past nurse Joyce Meadowcroft (Celia Imrie), meet on Thursday nights to crack unsolved historical killings — until they are propelled…

A computerised female voice is broadcasting impending doom. Sirens shriek down long, steam-congested corridors. Smears of emergency red amid oil-rig chic. One of the crew taps on an old-school keyboard surrounded by banks of winking white lights. According to MU/TH/UR, the ship’s Cassandra-like mainframe, the prognosis is bleak. Behind the crew member, attempting to smash the door’s glass panel, is that legendary Swiss-made biomechanoid hood ornament commonly known as a Xenomorph. This is the overture to Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth, the first television rendition of the unkillable saga. Any sense of déjà vu is entirely deliberate. “I had pinch-me moments, standing on the bridge with the helmets and the bobbing toy,” says Babou Ceesay, who plays Morrow, currently at the keys, fixed on surviving the fate of this Nostromo cover-version.…

1_A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (OUT 7 JULY, 4K BR) As Sam Mendes beavers away on his hopefully fab four films about the Fab Four, here’s a lovely reminder of why people are still talking about The Beatles 60 years on. Richard Lester’s snapshot of John, Paul, George and Ringo at the height of their powers is as fun, cheeky and vibrant as ever. The songs are pretty good too. 2_THE MONKEY (OUT NOW, DVD/BR/4K/DIGITAL) Osgood Perkins’ follow-up to Longlegs is a twisted take on a Stephen King short story about a toy monkey that serves as a dark harbinger of death, and is virtually a complete 180, tonally, from Longlegs’ suffocating, doom-laden atmosphere. This one is a live-action Looney-Tune, in which a series of grotesque characters are offed in increasingly…

LETTER OF THE MONTH POP QUIZ, HOTSHOT I’ve been a subscriber to Empire since around 2005 and have seen many features come and go (hello, ‘Listen To Your Friend Billy Zane’), but I am truly a massive fan of the monthly quiz (much to my wife’s annoyance). Every month when Empire arrives on the doorstep, the first thing I do is get my wife to quiz me. (Who said romance is dead?) Proudest moment was getting 18 out of 20 on The Muppets (including all members of the Electric Mayhem)! And who knew that I know more about Julia Roberts than I do Peter Jackson? Certainly not me! JONNY MOORE, VIA EMAIL Thanks for your kind words — and special thanks/apologies to Mrs Moore. To keep your quizzing skills sharp,…

LINDSAY LOHAN WAS just 17 when she made Freaky Friday, a 2003 intergenerational comedy that sits firmly in the canon of classic teen movies. As Anna, she played one half of a bickering mother-daughter duo, who swapped bodies with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Tess. Now she returns with the shoe on the other foot, as Anna switches with her own teen daughter Harper (Julia Butters), with Curtis also cooked into the chaos. Lohan tells Empire about putting her personal spin on Freakier Friday’s topsy-turvy world. JLC THE MVP After both Lohan and Curtis were repeatedly asked about a Freaky Friday sequel in interviews, the latter called up Disney CEO Bob Iger and Lohan directly to gauge their interest. “She said, ‘What do you think, if we do ‘Freaky Friday 2’?’” Lohan…

IN 2020, IN the wake of George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matters protests, social activist Misan Harriman picked up a camera. His powerful images of the BLM movement in the UK — which gained global attention after one was shared by Martin Luther King III — would lead him to become, alongside his campaign work, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand photographers. And beyond capturing the likes of Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett and Olivia Colman, he’s turned to filmmaking with Oscar-nominated, David Oyelowo-starring 2023 short film The After. It was only a matter of time before Harriman moved in front of the camera, as the subject of documentary Shoot The People. Directed by Andy Mundy-Castle, the film follows Harriman as an international activist, travelling the UK, Africa and Italy and…

‘THEME FROM SUPERMAN (OFFICIAL TRAILER VERSION)’ JOHN MURPHY SUPERMAN This interpretation of John Williams’ iconic Superman theme — now with thundering drums and swelling guitar solo delivering the much-loved melody — is a big, bold, modern update for the new Man Of Steel. ‘LOSE MY MIND’ DON TOLIVER FEAT. DOJA CAT F1 This slick, synth-heavy bop transports us from the racing track to the club via electronic beats and catchy vocals. Bonus points for Doja Cat showcasing her superstar versatility. ‘MAGIC’ PILOT HAPPY GILMORE 2 TRAILER Having served as something of a theme song for the original golf comedy, this cheerful needle drop returns over 20 years later for the Adam Sandler-fronted sequel, to welcome fans back to their Happy place. ‘FIGHT LIKE A GIRL’ EVANESCENCE FEAT. K.FLAY BALLERINA Killer…

4 - 30 JULY 2025 EXCELLENT STRONG GOOD WEAK YIKES WATCH FIRST Glimpsed on the TV during Jurassic World Rebirth, 1969’s The Valley Of Gwangi — about a cowboy (James Franciscus) who captures an Allosaurus called the Gwangi — was the last dinosaur flick animated by stop-motion genius Ray Harryhausen.…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 98 MINS DIRECTOR David Midell CAST Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, Abigail Cowen If you’re telling a story that involves an old priest, a young priest and a possessed girl and you aren’t The Exorcist, you have taken on the kind of challenge that would terrify Beelzebub himself. Director David Midell makes a valiant attempt at this fool’s errand, even if the result ultimately feels like just another wannabe. Dan Stevens plays the assistant, young Father Joseph Steiger, while Al Pacino is the old priest, Father Theophilus Riesinger, who must exorcise the disturbed Emma (Abigail Cowen). The film can’t quite decide whether it believes in demons or not. Stevens offers increasingly horrified reactions while Pacino hams it up, but it could have used…

DANNY BOYLE’S ZOMBIE NATION OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 115 MINS DIRECTOR Danny Boyle CAST Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes PLOT Raised in a survivors’ colony on Holy Island, 12-year-old Spike (Williams) takes a rite-of-passage trip to the infection-ravaged English mainland with his dad (Taylor-Johnson). DANNY BOYLE AND Alex Garland have never made obvious choices. Take 2002’s 28 Days Later in which they — Boyle as director, Garland as screenwriter — revolutionised zombie cinema with sprinting, blood-vomiting hordes. (Okay, technically ‘infected’, not reanimated-corpse zombies). It reinvigorated not just the walking dead, but grand, apocalyptic storytelling in the public consciousness. Over two decades later, end-of-the-world stories are old news — fungal armageddons and civilisation-razing outbreaks are mainstream TV fare. But with 28 Years Later, Boyle and Garland…

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 91 MINS DIRECTOR John Maclean CAST Kōki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira John Maclean’s acclaimed 2015 Slow West took a Scotsman to the American West; with Tornado, Maclean takes the Western to Scotland. This is an evocative portrait of 1790s Scotland, brought to life by Robbie Ryan’s rich cinematography. Japanese pop star Kōki plays Tornado, a samurai-intraining who crosses paths with a criminal gang led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) — which leads to a blood-drenched fight for survival. This is something of a slow burn, a film that requires patience before it finally reaches fever-pitch in the final act. Balancing multiple genres, the occasional pacing issues are countered by Jed Kurzel’s score, Ryan’s haunting photography, and standout turns from Kōki and Roth.…

PIXAR GOES TO A DIFFERENT INFINITY AND BEYOND OUT NOW / CERT PG / 98 MINS DIRECTORS Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina CAST Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil, Shirley Henderson PLOT Lonely orphan Elio (Kibreab) is mistaken for the leader of Earth and abducted by friendly aliens seeking intergalactic friendship. PIXAR HAS HAD a few creative wobbles over the past few years. Its biggest successes recently have been sequels: Inside Out 2 broke box-office records while their last original film, Elemental, hardly set the world alight. Thank goodness, then, for Elio. Helmed by a trio of co-directors — Domee Shi (Turning Red), Madeline Sharafian and Adrian Molina (Coco) — it’s a vivid, sweet but not saccharine voyage of discovery that proves Pixar is still…

STICK TV “Owen Wilson is capable of all the shades the character needs. You sense, in fact, that the writing somewhat coasts on his well-formed charms; had this featured another actor in the role, it might not have been nearly as compelling.” JOHN NUGENT CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD FILM “It’s possible that the plot does not, ultimately, make much sense, but the revelations and the splatter come so thick and fast in the final act that you hardly have time to worry about it.” HELEN O’HARA DANGEROUS ANIMALS FILM “This is Jai Courtney’s show. His commitment to the bit sells the film’s two-genres-in-one premise — a rare shark film that doesn’t try to outdo Jaws, instead using the ocean’s razor-toothed predators to a different end.”  BEN TRAVIS HOLLOWAY FILM “This…

“IT’S COMING IN HOT,” SAYS TRENT REZNOR. “It’s going,” says Atticus Ross. “It’s definitely going. Where, not sure.” This is how Nine Inch Nails respond to us asking how it’s going. Maybe they’re being enigmatic. Maybe their small-talk is a cut above the average. Maybe they’re just a little frazzled, working on the score for Tron: Ares, while also prepping for a world tour, while also prepping their own music festival, while also talking to Empire. Zooming in from a nondescript white room in a Burbank rehearsal hall, all of the above scenarios may be true. “We like to multitask and do many things at once,” deadpans Reznor. Ross laughs, perhaps morbidly. Nine Inch Nails are coming in hot, though, with Ares being the first score Reznor and Ross have…

GIVE ANYONE THE TASK OF NAMING THE most ineffable, charming stars of today, and odds are Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal would make that list. Who better to bring them together in a thorny love triangle, then, than director Celine Song, whose Best Picture-nominated debut, Past Lives, saw three people bound together by decades of unfulfilled desires and questions of ‘what if’? Materialists is not quite so tragic, but is tantalising all the same. Johnson plays Lucy, a New York matchmaker skilled at pairing up demanding clients in search of someone with the height, good looks and income of their dreams. But even though she’s made a career of playing Cupid, Lucy can’t seem to find a partner of her own. When a charismatic (and unspeakably rich) prospective…

FOR THE FIRST time in a long while, Tony Gilroy doesn’t have Andor on his mind, or in his diary. “I’ve been really monomaniacally on this five-year calendar,” he says, referring to the time he’s spent turning Andor into one of the great Star Wars stories, across two seasons and 24 episodes. And now, it’s over. When Empire talks to Gilroy over Zoom, it’s the morning after the night before, the morning after the final three episodes of Andor dropped on Disney+, taking Diego Luna’s rebel captain Cassian Andor all the way up to Rogue One, the movie where Gilroy first connected with the character, and the beginning of Cassian’s end. Endings are very much on Gilroy’s mind right now. “There are so many different farewells and endings to the…