Jesse Armstrong, Carey Mulligan, Tom Basden, And Tim Key

This week’s episode of the Empire Podcast sees the podteam — Chris Hewitt, Helen O’Hara, James Dyer and Alex Godfrey — getting to grips with the definition of in media res as this week’s listener question has the team chatting about some of their favourite films that throw you right into the action. Elsewhere, the gang talk about a busy week in the world of movie news, including Alex Garland’s Elden Ring movie, Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars delays, and — in a radical deviation into Pilot TV territory — HBO Harry Potter castings and the cancellation of Amazon’s The Wheel Of Time series. The team also spend some time paying tribute to Empire’s founding editor Barry McIlheney, who sadly died on Monday at the age of just 65, before reviewing a whole bunch of movies: namely The Ballad Of Wallis Island, Karate Kid: Legends, Mountainhead, The Ritual, and The Salt Path.

All that, and there’s still time for a smattering of starry guests on this week’s pod, too. First up, Chris has a whale of a time talking to Succession creator Jesse Armstrong about his feature filmmaking debut, Mountainhead, a delicious and none more timely “eat the rich” satire every bit as biting as the Roys’ saga. [26:34 — 39:29 approx.] Then, Chris is back on the interview beat once more with Tom Basden, Tim Key and Carey Mulligan, the stars of delightful recent British comedy The Ballad Of Wallis Island. [1:01:06 — 1:19:38 approx.] Oh, and Alex goes full Rory Bremner too at one point, which is… unexpected. Anyway, as ever, please do enjoy.