The Empire Film Podcast

Just like Chorley FM, this week's episode of the Empire Podcast is Cumming in your ears as Chris Hewitt invites the great Alan Cumming — star of this week's excellent documentary, My Old School — into the podbooth for a fun chat about bagels, surnames, and why making this movie felt like fate. Chris also has a lovely chat with Secret Headquarters star, the wowtastic Owen Wilson, and his directors,...

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is the latest MCU show to hit Disney+, and introduces us to Bruce Banner's cousin, Jennifer Walters, a high-flying lawyer who also happens to be a Hulk. The show launches on August 18 on Disney+, and in this episode Chris Hewitt (who is crazy about the show) sits down across Zoom for chats with Jessica Gao, the show's head writer/creator; Kat Coiro, the show's lead direct...

This week's Empire Podcast sees Chris Hewitt have two fascinating natters with two very different directors: first, Jordan Peele talks about his mysterious third movie, Nope (which gets a big Yep from us), and anoints Chris as the new Oprah Winfrey (you'll have to listen for it to make some kind of sense), and then Ari Folman, the director of Waltz With Bashir and new animated movie Where Is Anne...

We've got Predator on our minds this week on the Empire Podcast. Which makes a change. Not only do we review Dan Trachtenberg's Prey, his prequel to John McTiernan's 1987 action classic, but Chris Hewitt sits down with that film's star, Amber Midthunder, for a fun interview in which they discuss how Amber, whose parents are an actor and a casting director, wasn't necessarily fated to become an act...

Next week sees the release of David Leitch's latest action movie, Bullet Train, which we're confidently told is not a sequel to The Railway Children Return. Instead, it stars Brad Pitt as an assassin on board a Japanese bullet train, who gets mixed up with a colourful cast of fellow hitpeople, not all of whom have his best interests at heart. Two of those are Tangerine and Lemon, two Cockney kille...

Nature is healing. How do we know? Because Saturday saw Kevin Feige and some of his amazing friends return to Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con to announce a ton of exciting news about the future of the MCU, including the first trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, an 18-episode Disney+ series for Charlie Cox's Daredevil and not one, but two Avengers movies, due to be released just six month...

We can't move for members of the Howard family on the Empire Podcast these days. Why, only the other week we had Bryce Dallas Howard, and now her dad, the great director Ron, is our special guest this episode, as he tells Chris Hewitt all about his latest movie, Thirteen Lives, the story of the near-impossible Thai cave diving rescue that captivated the world in 2018. Ron and Chris also talk about...

Don't ever say that the Empire Podcast has a predictable roster of guests. For this week sees tennis legend John McEnroe sit down on Zoom with Chris Hewitt for a fun chat about his career, the new documentary McEnroe (which chronicles said career), and the numerous cameos he's made (usually as himself) in an array of films and TV shows. We cannot be serious? We can be serious. And don't call us Sh...

This week's Empire Podcast sees someone new and noteworthy ease themselves into the fourth chair, as Eddie Hamilton, the brilliant editor of Top Gun: Maverick and the forthcoming double whammy of Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, joins the podteam — Chris Hewitt, James Dyer, and John Nugent — for the duration of the show. So, as well as picking Eddie's brains for tales of editing Maverick and getting t...

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees the podteam — Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara and James Dyer — recovering from their failure to win Podcast Of The Year at the BSME awards. In the process of doing so, they prove categorically why they didn't win, and in the process discuss the greatest movie pilots (who aren't Maverick), talk about the best way to beat Roger Deakins in a fight, chat about...

Elvis has entered the building. This week sees the release of Elvis, Baz Luhrmann's energetic biopic of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock'n'roll, and as a result our guest is Austin Butler, the young actor whose scintillating, swaggering performance as Elvis is set to make him a huge star. The charming Butler talks to Chris Hewitt about getting under Elvis' skin, and about the time he had a surprisi...

Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is a fantastic new British movie that sees Dame Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack spend a lot of time together in a hotel room. So that's exactly what we made them do again this week, with Ella Kemp (making her Empire Podcast debut) talking to the stars of Sophie Hyde's movie about an ageing woman who, having had very few positive sexual experiences, hires a sex worker...

Udo Kier is one of cinema's greatest cult heroes. The German actor has been working steadily for almost sixty years, having become an actor after being discovered by chance while living in London as a young man. Since then, he's built one of the most eclectic filmographies around, appearing in over 200 films which have seen him work with some of the greatest directors around. Virtually all those a...

This week's Empire Podcast is an episode 65 million and 29 years in the making, as Jurassic World: Dominion star Bryce Dallas Howard pops in for a face-to-face chat with Chris Hewitt, in which she talks about growing up on set with her director dad, Ron Howard, and how he's rubbish at keeping secrets. There's plenty of dino-chat as well for you Parkheads. Then, in the virtual podbooth this week, C...

With Ms. Marvel, the latest MCU TV show, set to debut on Disney+ this Wednesday (June 8), we've decided to bring you a special preview of the show, and what you can expect from Kamala Khan, the newest hero on the Marvel Cinematic Universe block. In this suitably embiggened episode of the Empire Podcast, Chris Hewitt chats with the show's key creatives — head directors Adil & Bilall, show creator a...

Britain may have shut down to mark the celebrations of the Queen's latest Jubilation Lee, but the Empire Podcast keeps on trucking, folks. In this week's episode, Chris Hewitt sits down on Zoom (luckily, with no demon present) to talk to director Rob Savage about DASHCAM, his follow-up to the sensational Host, and he brings his stars Annie Hardy and Amar Chadha-Patel along for an interview that is...

Only a group as seismic as The Sex Pistols could bring the Empire Podcast and the Pilot TV Podcast together once again. Yes, to mark the launch of Danny Boyle's brand-new six-part series, Pistol, on Disney+, Chris Hewitt, James Dyer, and Beth Webb put their collective noggins together and discuss the show, which debuts on Disney+ on May 31, and which charts the rapid rise and fall of the British p...

"Carter! That's my name!" And Hodges! That's his name! Get Carter, the 1971 film that marked Mike Hodges' directorial debut on the big screen and which launched a career that would take in the likes of Flash Gordon and Croupier, has been re-released and remastered (in glorious 4K) by the BFI. It looks and sounds better than ever, so now you can bask in the bleakness of this revenge thriller, which...

In a world-first for a podcast, every single person on this week's episode of the Empire Podcast (sorry, newly award-nominated Empire Podcast) is played by Rory Kinnear. Probably. Actually, that's not true, but after witnessing his tour de force performance(s) in Alex Garland's MEN, which is out next week and which sees Kinnear play multiple roles opposite Jessie Buckley, we wouldn't be surprised...

Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now that's a name we've not heard in a long time. A long time. But we're delighted to hear it again, because that means that Ewan McGregor is returning to the role he played in George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy (and which Alec Guinness originated, of course, in the original trilogy) in a six-part limited edition show which launches this week on Disney+. And to celebrate, we'v...

This week's Empire Podcast sees the great writer/producer/director Judd Apatow drop in for another appearance, this time with his documentarian hat on, as he tells Chris Hewitt all about why he made the excellent two-part documentary, George Carlin's American Dream, which tells the life story of the great American stand-up, who was famous for his legendary routine about the seven words you can't s...

Episodes of The Ranking are like buses: you wait ages for one, and then when you get on, everyone's discussing the movies of Nicolas Cage. In this special live edition of The Ranking, recorded at our all-day Episode 500 celebrations at Kings Place in February (can it really be so long ago?), Helen O'Hara leads a motley crew of Cage enthusiasts — Nick de Semlyen, John Nugent, Amon Warmann, and Dan...

Heck of a week for comebacks on the latest episode of The Empire Podcast. First up, Ke Huy Quan — the iconic Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, and Data in The Goonies — tells Chris Hewitt all about why he has ended his long hiatus from acting with the sensational Everything Everywhere All At Once. Then Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch, two of the five members of legendary Cana...

The Gray Man — the latest movie from Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of little films like Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame and Welcome To Collinwood — is on the cover of this month's Empire magazine (on sale now, folks, in all good, evil and virtual newsagents), and so we can finally bring you the latest Empire Podcast interview special: a one-hour chat between Joe Russo and our...

This is too much Multiverse Of Madness to fit into one text! Yes, this week finally sees the Empire Podteam assess the long-awaited arrival of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, directed by Chris Hewitt's beloved possessed GOAT boy, Sam Raimi, and as well as reviewing that film, our guest this week is one of the stars of the movie, Elizabeth Olsen, aka Wanda Maximoff, aka The Scarlet Wit...