The Empire Film Podcast

Welcome to Downtonpalooza, as this week's guests on the Empire Podcast hail from either side of the camera on Downton Abbey: A New Era, the latest cinematic instalment of the ever-popular Downton Abbey franchise. First, Helen O'Hara chats to two of the movie's stars, Laura Carmichael and Tuppence Middleton, and then has a natter with the creator of the whole shebang, Julian Fellowes. Then, in the...

Choose life. Choose a podcast. Choose a movie podcast. Choose Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, Amon Warmann, and James Dyer talking about movies. Choose the occasional digression about fancy restaurants and Easter eggs. Choose a listener question (well, sort of) about the best lightsaber battles in Star Wars history. Choose discussion of the week's biggest movie news, including the Thor: Love And Thund...

This week's Empire Podcast brings you not one but two former Mr. Darcys, in the shape of Operation Mincemeat stars, Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen, who tell Chris Hewitt all about their connection to the World War II thriller, and their personal approaches to acting. Chris also has a lovely natter this week with Alexander Skarsgård, the star and producer of Robert Eggers' bonkers and brilliant...

This week's Empire Podcast sees a bright and optimistic young man who wears spectacles, lives under the stairs, and just might be the last hope for humanity... interview Daniel Radcliffe. Yes, in this episode Ben Travis, a humungous Harry Potter fan, finally comes face-to-face with The Boy Who Lived, and as well as talking about Radcliffe's new movie, adventure comedy The Lost City, his musical ta...

The world has been waiting all week for an exclusive interview with someone called Smith, and this week's Empire Podcast doesn't disappoint, as Chris Hewitt sits down on Zoom with Morbius star Matt Smith, and they have a lovely natter about nicknames, horror movies, and Smith's desire to play Dracula, now that he's got his fangs into the whole vampire thang. (What, did you think we meant another S...

Here's a podcast that can tell the difference between its waking life... and dreams. Yes, folks, as Moon Knight finally makes his dramatic debut on Disney+, this special edition of the Empire Podcast brings you interviews with the folks who brought the MCU's latest hero to life. First, Chris Hewitt welcomes the show's stars -- Moon Knight/Marc Spector/Steven Grant himself, Oscar Isaac; Ethan Hawke...

Another bumper, jam-packed edition of the Empire Podcast this week, as we cram four guests and the podteam into the back of an ambulance and take off at high speed. First, Chris Hewitt has a fun chat with Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, stars of Michael Bay's cracking new thriller, Ambulance. Then, as Chopper gets a re-release to mark its 20th-ish anniversary, Chris jumps on Zoom with t...

Welcome to The Great Unwatched, a new Empire Podcast show brought to you by JustWatch, the ultimate movie and TV streaming guide. In this episode, Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara and James Dyer get together to plan a movie marathon. But the twist is that the movies they suggest must be obscure efforts, worthy of discovery, and that at least one of the trio hasn't seen. The idea is simple, the results a...

This week's Empire Podcast sees Sophie Butcher interview Sebastian Stan, while trying not to say the words 'homecoming', 'fahrenheit' and 'boxcar'. Otherwise, bad things might happen. Not that they could be much worse than the bad things that happen in Stan's new movie, Fresh, in which he stars alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones as a new couple whose relationship turns very dark, very quick. Sophie talks...

Episode 500 of the Empire Podcast may have taken place in February, but we're continuing our quest to bring you recorded versions of all the shows we mounted on that day. And the latest is the live edition of beloved/besmirched podcast semi-regular segment, The Three Fact Structure, in which host Chris Hewitt takes it easy while Ben Travis, Helen O'Hara, and James Dyer work themselves to the bone...

Red is the colour for this week's Empire Podcast. First, Ben Travis has a chat with Sandra Oh and Rosalie Chiang, stars of the new Pixar movie, Turning Red, and then Red Rocket director, Sean Baker, tells Alex Godfrey all about how he pulled off his delightful latest, in which Simon Rex stars as a porn star down on his luck. Sorry about the innuendo there, but that sets the tone for this mucky-min...

The first three episodes of The Dropout, the new series charting the rise and fall of tech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, the company she founded, have landed on Disney+, and in the latest team-up between the Empire Podcast and Pilot TV Podcast, Chris Hewitt, James Dyer, and Beth Webb have a good old natter about it. In this very special crossover episode, in association with Disney+,...

Riddle us this, riddle us, erm, shimmy, who's the man who wrote Steven Soderbergh's Kimi? Why, that would be David Koepp, one of our cracking guests on this week's Empire Podcast. The legendary screenwriter sits down on a Zoom with Chris Hewitt and tells him all about that, being a writer on set, and much more. And riddle us this, riddle us, um, drano, why does nothing rhyme with Dano? Yes, Ben Tr...

Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's BAFTA and Oscar-nominated Summer Of Soul (Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is one of the finest directorial debuts in years, as the Roots drummer/musical maestro crafts a powerful and profound documentary that charts the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, a music festival that took place in the same summer as Woodstock, and yet didn't receive nearly the s...

Kenneth Branagh's wonderful BELFAST sees the writer-director (but not actor on this one, as he explains) return to his youth for inspiration, charting a beautiful black-and-white path through the childhood of a young boy growing up in the Northern Irish capital in 1969, just as The Troubles are about to truly erupt, changing the lives of all who lived there for decades to come. In this Empire Podc...

There go our heroes. Watch them as they go. This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees three big names chat with us about their new projects, and as a result this pod is a little... everlong. First, Joe Wright, director of Cyrano, talks with Hanna Flint about his new musical and discloses his favourite Christmas movie along the way. Then Alex Godfrey Zooms in for a chat with the great Paul Tho...

This week's Empire Podcast has a pair of interviews with some heavy-hitting acting types. First off, Joanna Scanlan, recently BAFTA-nominated for Best Actress for her turn in the excellent drama, After Love, talks with Helen O'Hara about that, and about playing the long game in her career. Then Hanna Flint (making her Empire Podcast debut) has a fun chat, recorded before Christmas hence the festiv...

Because a few of you demanded it, here it is: the Empire Podcast's breakdown of the brand-new trailer for Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Join Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, Amon Warmann, and Ben Travis as they go frame-by-frame through the new trailer, and the 30-second Super Bowl TV spot, as if it's the Zapruder film. Features: wild speculation and rumour-mongering, much of...

Happy birthday, Hot Fuzz! Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's cracking cop comedy is now fifteen years old, if you can believe it. And in this very special episode of the Empire Podcast, recorded live at Kings Place as part of our all-day celebration of Episode 500, Chris Hewitt sits down with Wright and Pegg live on stage for a one-hour deep dive into the movie. Featuring never-before-heard stories of...

We don't hang around here on the Empire Podcast. Less than a week after the epic celebration that was our 500th episode, we're already back in the podbooth, bringing you episode 501. And it's a belter, folks, as Chris Hewitt is joined by newly-minted BAFTA and Oscar nominee, the wonderful West Side Story star, Ariana DeBose, for a chat that takes in Spielberg, auditions, British accents, SNL, and...

Here it is, folks. A landmark episode deserves an epic running time. Welcome to the 500th episode of the Empire Podcast, recorded in front of a live audience at Kings Place, London, on Saturday, February 5, and featuring our most astonishing line-up of guests yet. There's Tom Holland (no, not that one), talking about Uncharted and spoiling the hell out of Spider-Man: No Way Home (seriously, maybe...

The legendary Donnie Yen has been kicking all kinds of butt for decades now, in movies like Hero, Ip Man, Blade II, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. His latest movie, Raging Fire (the last directed by Benny Chan) is out now on DVD, Blu-ray and digital, and to mark the occasion, Amon Warmann sat down with Donnie Yen for an engrossing in-depth chat. Which we present to you in full. Enjoy!

Episodes of The Ranking are like buses. Not in the 'you wait ages for one, and then three turn up at once' sense (although we do acknowledge that episodes of this fine spin-off from Empire magazine, in which four Empire writers argue the toss about a series of films and come up with a definitive cough cough top ten, have not exactly been on the regular). More in the 'you get on one, and all you fi...

Edgar Wright's latest movie, the pulse-pounding, melon-melting, time-twisting psychological thriller, Last Night In Soho, is out now on all the formats you can think of (and some you can't), so you can watch it in the comfort of your own home. So now is the perfect time to bring you lucky lot the first hour of the epic TWO AND A HALF HOUR spoiler special interview that we recorded with Wright and...

Reacher may say nothing, but thankfully Alan Ritchson -- the actor who steps into the shoes of Lee Child's man-mountain master detective, Jack Reacher, on a new Prime Video series called REACHER that launches on February 4 -- says plenty. He talks to Chris Hewitt this week, and tells him all about his audition for Reacher, acing Reacher's physicality, and what inspiration he drew from Child. Chris...