The Shameless Plug: Lords Of The Rings

10:58Nick de Semlyen:going from Hal Brand into Sauron, you know, like going from his disguise into his real thing. And then we had Galadriel going from her regular look into battle mode. So that was really cool. And then, yeah, we wanted to do a Sauron kind of special because this is where he's taking his true form. So, yeah, really happy with how it came out.

11:20Chris Hewitt:But we're going to focus on three more features, aren't we, Nick, from the feature section and talk about how they came about and what it was like doing them. Where do you want to start?

11:28Nick de Semlyen:Let's start with Aardman. Let's start in Bristol. We went to Aardman. 50 years Aardman has been going. Wow. Very, very slowly. I mean, it takes them about 10 years to make a film because they do things very, very slowly and very, very meticulously. and they make their movies with Clay and we decided to, in an article headlined Feet of Clay, F-E-A-T we went down to Bristol. Helen O 'Hara went down there and lived a bit of that park life that Nick park life and met the Aardman bigwigs and just talked to them about their journey and the characters. And we also sent our photographer Marco Vitter down there who did a photo issue with the characters and i love the opener for this it's such a cool image it's um we had the idea of all of the aardman kind of mvp characters all lined up holding a big banner with a headline on it and it came off it it happened of course if you don't know what aardman

12:29Chris Hewitt:is the aardman are the bristol-based stop-motion animation studio they are absolutely fantastic they're the studio behind wallace and gromit of course uh but also the likes of of chicken run and Flushed Away and The Pirates in An Adventure with Scientists and Morph. And that is a tremendous, tremendous feature. I know Helen spoke to pretty much everybody. So not just Nick Park, not just Peter Lord, David Sproxton, people behind the new Shaun of the Sheep movie. Shaun of the Sheep? People behind the new Shaun of the Sheep movie. Artman is a jewel in the animation crown, not just our animation crown, but just, I would say, Nick, just animation in general.

13:08Chris Hewitt:Oh, yeah. It's incredible that we have two very idiosyncratic stop motion animation studios doing incredible things on both sides of the Atlantic. We have Aardman over here and obviously Leica in the States.

13:22Nick de Semlyen:We're going to get to Leica a little bit later. But yeah, this is our most stop motion issue of all time, I will say, because we have big, big collaborations with Aardman and Leica the same month. So if you're into stop motion, we are spoiling you.

13:36Chris Hewitt:It took four months to print the issue. It was quite incredible.

13:40Nick de Semlyen:We moved one quarter of an inch at a time. It took ages. But yeah, we also have a bit of a preview for the new Aardman movie, Shaun the Sheep, The Beast of Mossy Bottom, which is out in September next month. Cannot wait.

13:51Chris Hewitt:Cannot wait. Coming towards us very slowly.

13:54Nick de Semlyen:But yeah, it's a big month for Clay.

13:57Chris Hewitt:Yes, a huge month for Clay. A terrible month if you're trying to get Clay because Aardman and Laika have bought it all. But hey-ho, there's Play-Doh. Play-Doh is available what else do we have? let's talk about Mayday, because that's yours yeah that is me, that's me so this is Mayday Mayday is a new film from John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein who are the amazing writing-directing duo sometimes not writing, sometimes only writing sometimes only directing duo behind the likes of Vacation the reboot of Vacation, which deserves a lot of love Game Night people who listen to this regularly will know how much I love Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves, which came out a couple of years ago, was instantly, I think, beloved, but didn't do that well at the box office.

14:44Chris Hewitt:Those who saw it loved it, but more people didn't see it than saw it, sadly. But they've moved on. They moved on to a new film called Mayday, which is out on Apple TV at the beginning of September. It stars Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. Ryan Reynolds plays an American fighter pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines in Russia in 1987. And he teams up reluctantly at first with Kenneth Branagh's mysterious, I guess, forest man, who turns out to be an unstoppable one-man army, which comes in handy when you're trying to escape the KGB and get the hell out of Russia. And they form this lovely buddy action-comedy duo.

15:27Chris Hewitt:And it's a really, really fun film. I think I can say that. I'm not sure if I can. Go on. You have now. I think I can say it. I have now. And it's got this tremendous buddy movie duo at the heart of it, which is Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. And for this feature, I spoke to them both on a bank holiday Monday at the end of May. I got together with them. Literal May Day. Literal May Day. It was literal May Day, although I think it was the one at the end of the month, so it wasn't actually May Day. And Ryan Reynolds was in New York in an undisclosed location. And Kenneth Branagh was in his home in England.

16:05Chris Hewitt:But nevertheless, we managed to make it work over Zoom. And you really got a sense of their relationship and their friendship and the bonds that they forged on this movie. And it's fascinating because Reynolds, I've interviewed him a lot over the years. He's really, I mean, he's an incredibly funny guy. He's one of the quickest wits I've ever met. He's an incredible improv artist. he could if he wanted to I think be a truly great stand up as well he just has those chops but he also has I think depths to him which haven't always been explored on the big screen and he's incredibly thoughtful and articulate in person and I think in this collaboration this conversation with Kenneth Branagh that very very much comes across as well and Kenneth Branagh again I've interviewed him loads over the years as well and he is just you know wonderfully earnest very sincere but has a a very lovely unexpected wicked streak as well so it's just great to see the two of them bounce off each other it's a very fun chat

17:10Nick de Semlyen:I will say it's one of those you know I wouldn't have thought like I would love to hear Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh they seem like very different people but I think they they have such a great kind of dynamic with each other I enjoyed them talking about the new four movie. They come up with a, a not entirely serious title for the new four movie. Yep. Do you remember that?

17:30Chris Hewitt:I do. Yep.

17:31Nick de Semlyen:Uh, I don't want to reveal it on here,

17:33Chris Hewitt:but I guess I do.

17:34Nick de Semlyen:And, um, yeah, I also enjoyed that Ryan Reynolds quotes poetry. Yes. I've always wanted to drop a bit of poetry, but I've never managed it so far, but, um,

17:43Chris Hewitt:yeah, I cut out the bit where we, we spent five minutes Googling it. Cause you can't quite remember where it came from. And then we were like, okay, does Kenneth Brown, surely Kenneth Brennan knows this quote. This is the advantage of print, isn't it?

17:55Nick de Semlyen:If that happened on a podcast, it wouldn't work out so well. Just hang on two seconds while I just...

17:59Chris Hewitt:It was great. It's a very fun chat.

18:03Nick de Semlyen:I'm looking forward to seeing the film. We are doing a VIP event. I think we've announced it. Whether I have or not, we are doing a VIP event and that is coming up in early September.

18:15Chris Hewitt:Yes. And there's another thing. There's another duo of great note in this issue. I love this feature, Nick. This was tremendous. What is it?

18:25Nick de Semlyen:The headline is Hell Yeah, and it is celebrating Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, one of the greatest sequels of all time. This came about in quite an interesting way. Alex Godfrey, the features editor, and I were chatting, and we noticed that there was a new 4K Arrow release of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I happen to know Alex Winter a little bit. He's a lovely guy. I've interviewed him a bunch of times over the years. I went for coffee with him in New York once. He is a lovely, lovely guy. Makes great documentaries. That's mostly what we've talked about. We've never actually done a Bill and Ted feature in Empire in the history of the magazine.

19:02Nick de Semlyen:I'm pretty confident that that's the case. I went back and checked. You didn't do one from Face Music? No, we didn't end up doing that. We didn't. For reasons. But we wanted to, but it didn't work out. So we have never gone big on Bill and Ted. And they're some of my favorite films, the first two certainly. and so I dropped Alex Winter a line and lovely guy that he is, he was like yeah, I think I'm up for this, I think Keanu will be up for this and next thing we knew, Alex was on a Zoom with Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves together talking about Bill and Ted's bogus journey, now that is the magic of Empire and you know, that anything can happen really and so it's an amazing read and I think Keanu was on his way somewhere he was like going to an airport on his way back but he did it from a car and it's a really fun read.

19:50Nick de Semlyen:I've got to say Alex did a great job with it. Both Alex's.

19:52Chris Hewitt:Both Alex's, yes. It's great. It's great to get Keanu in kind of laid-back form. I love those guys' relationships. I love how it's their friendship has developed over years. It's a genuine friendship. They work together a lot now. They were recently awaiting for Godot on Broadway. So this fast and firm friendship has come out of the Bill and Ted movies, which is great.

20:14Nick de Semlyen:I like that. And there's great stuff in here. I mean, we find out that Alex Winter had the evil robot head. He had Bill's evil robot head and he was using it as a doorstop in his house, but then it rotted. And Keanu revealed he has Ted's shorts from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey still. It's not clear whether he still wears them, but he has them.

20:35Nick de Semlyen:Alex also talked to Death himself, William Sadler. Yes. Caught up with him and talked about playing that character and his quite crazy audition.

20:48Chris Hewitt:But that's not all, Nick. We're going to pick out three things as well from Beth Webb's section. John Nugent's review section is always brilliant, of course. It has all the reviews you could possibly wish to read and some that you don't. But Beth's section is the news section. First word is what it's called. Nick, pick out three things that people should pick up the magazine for.

21:09Nick de Semlyen:Yeah, Beth always does an amazing job with the news section. It's always a heady mix of previews of big, exciting movies, and then just random madness. And this month's certainly got everything. We have a preview of Clara and the Sun, which is the new Taika Waititi movie with General Ortega playing some kind of robot. I haven't read the book. I really should. It's by Kazuo Ishiguro, who did Never Let Me Go and other classics. And apparently the book is fantastic. but yeah Taika Waititi is putting his unique spin on it and um he tells us all about what we can expect and confirms there will be no screaming goats in this film I like the screaming goats they're no not a single screaming goat so that's a shame um but yeah so we have that as the opener um we also have uh Beth spoke to talking of random madness uh talked to the winner did you know Chris that there is a Minions singing contest.

22:07Chris Hewitt:No.

22:08Nick de Semlyen:You can win the golden banana if you can sing in Minionese. So basically what they do is they pick a song, they change the lyrics to Minionese, and they give it their best shot. So we track down the winner, Rania Kando. It's her lifelong dream to win this contest. Lifelong dream,

22:30Chris Hewitt:but the Minions have only been around for a few years. well well have they been around for years when was the first despicable me 2006 or something

22:38Nick de Semlyen:quite young she's only 26 so they've been around they've been around a while so anyway so that is a very enjoyable random thing talking of random um i wrote a piece about the rise of 40x which was inspired by us doing a vip event for evil dead burn which you and i went along to you were hosting it i just tagged along and we sat in the 40x i just was curious because i had never done it in retrospect an evil dead film might not have been the the wise choice for your first experience um although i have also been seeing clips of people who have been seeing the odyssey in 40x and the storm scene and that looks horrific you're just literally so 40 in case you don't know what 40x is chris how would you describe it the chairs it's enhanced it's enhanced interactive cinema uh

23:22Chris Hewitt:so you it's basically you're going you're going on a roller coaster ride while not moving an inch at least your chair doesn't move an inch but you move a lot so you're basically sitting in a chair that can move around uh in conjunction with whatever's happening on the screen and it also has other things as well that takes you into the fourth dimension so you're not just experiencing 3d you're experiencing 40 because if there's wind on screen you get a puff of air blown in your face if there's water on screen you get splashed with water and it can move around pretty violently as

23:55Nick de Semlyen:well this year it's kind of a cross between a roller coaster and i i and a spa i don't know it's um it's insane like in evil dead every time there was blood squirting on the hero's face which happened more than once yeah they would spray liquid into your face i presume it was water might have been blood yeah um and yeah they can unleash smells uh they have had shrek screenings where you get ogre scents i don't know what that involves that's amazing um yeah so i spoke to a a really interesting guy called Stuart Crane who works at Cineworld and he's very involved in 40X and he was really interesting and talked to me about the evolution.

24:31Nick de Semlyen:It started in, I believe it started in South Korea. There was a cinema chain in South Korea. They started it in 2009. The first 40X film was Journey to the Century of the Earth.

24:42Chris Hewitt:Wow.

24:43Nick de Semlyen:I can't remember if that's the one where Michael Caine rides a bumblebee. That's the second one, isn't it? Anyway. um yeah and it's and it's got bigger and bigger and now they're you know they're re-releasing raids of the lost ark in 40x next month which i'm very tempted yeah very tempted um to check that

25:00Chris Hewitt:out i've had a couple of 40x experiences so i had the evil dead burn one which was regrettable um because i wasn't i wasn't ready for it uh and i didn't i'd forgotten how intense that movie was i'd seen it already but i i was just like i didn't expect to be buffeted constantly for nearly two hours. The thing is, Evil Dead Burns is quite a long movie as well for a horror film. So it was a lot of being just thrown around. And it felt like I staggered out of the chair to host a Q &A at the end. I felt like I needed a massage after that. I saw Avengers Endgame in 4DX as well, which was terrific. But that spread over a three-hour period and it doesn't constantly buffet you, which is good.

25:40Chris Hewitt:And I saw Gaspar Noé's Love in 4DX, which in hindsight was probably a mistake.

25:45Nick de Semlyen:I did love that the director of Evil Dead Burn came out after the film had finished he had only just been told about 40X and he came out and looked genuinely worried for us he said is it not too much like yeah I mean would it work for like my dinner with Andre can you imagine that every time the waiter arrives you're like I would be up for that but yeah it's a bit divisive you know some people it's too much some people love it I had a good time I would definitely go back and have another 40X experience, maybe just a couple of times a year. But yeah, I mean, apparently Tom Cruise is a big fan. Stuart Crane, when I spoke to him, said that he had been down at the O2.

26:29Nick de Semlyen:And I think it was the Top Gun Maverick trailer had just dropped and they showed it to him in a 40X chair and watched it. And he loved it. He said, that's what cinema is all about. So there we go. Cruise approved.

26:41Chris Hewitt:oh and i was gonna was i gonna mention something else no i was gonna yeah i was gonna mention uh i

26:46Nick de Semlyen:was gonna mention pint of milk you know we do we've been doing pint of milk in the magazine for

26:49Chris Hewitt:decades um apart from a long break we had a long break remember we did have a long break yeah i

26:55Nick de Semlyen:mean it's always a fun stroke nerve-wracking thing to do because you're throwing slightly unhinged questions at people and you don't know how they're going to react and sometimes um i I still remember my brother doing pint of milk with Eric Cantona and he did it unwisely in the office. So everyone was listening to Phil talking to Eric Cantona. And one of the questions, which we've dropped, right? It's how hairy is your ass? We had that for a while.

27:22Chris Hewitt:Yes. Honestly, but not just again, you've done what Phil did on a scale of one to 10. Yeah.

27:29Nick de Semlyen:Well, there was, there was a, there was a few mistakes that Phil made. One of them was not, not saying the scale thing. Yes. Not, sort of making clear that he needed a number. But also, Eric Cantona couldn't really understand what Phil was saying. So he said, how airy is my house? And it was just this astonishing thing of Phil loudly saying in the office while we were all there, no, how hairy is your ass? And Eric Cantona going, how hairy is my ass? But anyway, when it works, it's fun. I mean, I did a pint of milk with Robin Williams, and it was a definite career highlight. It was incredible. He was doing voices.

28:05Nick de Semlyen:He was going for it. It was, he did a, a, an impression of a mongoose vomiting out of a car window. Um, I can't remember why now, but it was memorable for me. But anyway, this is all prelude to say that this month's pint of milk is an all timer. Alex Godfrey spoke to Miriam Margulies, um, the great Miriam Margulies, who, if you've read any interview with her, she doesn't mess around. No. Um, she, she gets straight into it. She will say anything and does. And so it's all I'll say is pick up the magazine, if only for Miriam Monocleys.

28:40Chris Hewitt:But also for Armin and for Rings of Power and for Mayday and for Bill and Ted and for Minion singing contests and for everything else we've mentioned so far.

28:49Nick de Semlyen:There's like a million other things. Like you talked to Lorda Miller.

28:52Chris Hewitt:I did. In my section, the best section, the final cut section, which dwells on home entertainment releases. I spoke to Phil Lord and Chris Miller about the triumph of Project Hail Mary it's always great talking to those guys they're so switched on and funny and profound and insightful so that was wonderful I spoke to Mary Steenburgen for our time capsule regular and that was great just showing her pictures from throughout her incredible career and then only after the interview was over did I realise I didn't show her a picture from the film that she won an Oscar for

29:29Nick de Semlyen:which in hindsight

29:31Chris Hewitt:was an oversight so she won Best Supporting Actress very early in her career for Melvin and Howard, Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard and I didn't show her anything from that

29:43Nick de Semlyen:I mean knowing you Chris I'm just amazed you didn't just show 10 pictures from Step Brothers I mean I wanted to

29:49Chris Hewitt:but I did show her a picture from the fucking Catalina wine mixer so that was nice, she was lovely and at one point she tilted the camera over and showed me her dog lying upside down on its back fast asleep its legs splayed in the air and it's like oh that's not just her dog that's ted danson's dog as well so that's that was pretty damn cool and talking to her about working with ted danson on you know the man man on the inside and curb

30:14Nick de Semlyen:your enthusiasm and things like that she was lovely it's very cool and it's a very cool amelie

30:18Chris Hewitt:piece yes thanks nabes you got the issue i don't i'm going entirely off memory here uh yes uh so we have something called story of the shot as well where we take iconic shots this has been going for many many years now this feature uh we're running out of shots so if you have any ideas for iconic shots for movies please do send them in to me and we'll see what we can do um iconic images for movies and then we try to where possible because sometimes the people involved are long gone um we try to talk to the people behind the shots or who were involved with the shot and get the full story and this month uh amelie sean-pierre chunet is amelie has been re-released on 4k and i thought that's perfect uh what's the shot that comes to mind when i think of amelie it's her in the cinema uh watching movies and the cameras on her face and uh i i spent half an hour on zoom with sean-pierre chunet talking about that and it was an absolute unalloyed joy and because it's very personal to him because Amelie in many ways is him and her love of cinema is his love of cinema and all that sort of stuff and his wife is actually in that shot as well they had just met on Alien Resurrection of all movies so yeah so that's in there as well.

31:36Nick de Semlyen:Yeah I mean it's often really fun to talk to people after enough time has passed that they can A. be incredibly candid and B. just you know you get new perspective from them on it and I'm very grateful to you for let me talk to Robert Bierman, the director of Vampire's Kiss. I had an absolute blast. I talked to him for an hour. Kim Newman of Empire, column fame, and I have done a commentary for the new 4K of Vampire's Kiss. We had a really good time talking about that film. It's absolutely batshit. If you haven't seen it, it's Nicolas Cage inventing mega acting. It came out in the 80s, and it is truly a deranged film.

32:14Nick de Semlyen:Robert Bierman had amazing stories. he told me about the assistant to Nicholas Cage, who was charged. He was a guy called Donnie and Nicholas Cage. There was a scene with a bat. They wanted to use a fake bat, but Nick Cage wanted a real one. So he sent Donnie with a mop and a bucket to Central Park to find a bat and catch a bat and bring it back to him. And he did not succeed, but it's incredible stories. So I had a good time doing that.

32:39Chris Hewitt:That's really interesting, Nick, but how that spread evolved is because you said to me, hey Vampire's Kiss is coming out and we should do something in that and then I said because there's a moment that's become quite famous in that film where Nick Cage basically recites the alphabet in his mega acting style

32:58Nick de Semlyen:he goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G

33:02Chris Hewitt:and then he goes through the entire alphabet and it's become really famous for that so I was like we should do the A to Z of Vampire's Kiss and you were all for that

33:10Nick de Semlyen:it was a good idea but then sadly reality intervened you know sometimes we have ideas and most of the time we can pull them off and then sometimes you come up with an idea and you love it and then you go right how you talk to like the design team and you kind of go oh okay this is not going to work we're going to need like 8 pages we just didn't have the word count to make that work it would have been great online it might have worked over 4 pages

33:35Chris Hewitt:other things I got in the past I remember in fact I stumbled upon this recently I was looking through an old issue and I stumbled upon a piece I did with Ben Wheatley for Free Fire and the original concept behind that was to literally talk through every bullet that was fired in the movie every single bullet that was fired in the movie and i spent ages actually literally writing down who fires which bullet when who it's aimed at where it lands all that sort of stuff and then you just come up against the reality of it is which is you know in that case we had four pages but still that wasn't enough to make it all work because there are literally hundreds of bullets fired in that movie so in the end we had to like zero in on key bullets that are firing bullets that hit people or kill people or miss just in the nick of time.

34:16Nick de Semlyen:I'm just envisioning you as Charlie Day in that famous meme from It's Always Sunny where he's got the board with the string and stuff. That would have driven you insane. You would have turned into Nick Cage from Vampire's Kiss.

34:26Chris Hewitt:I think I would have done. I would have gone, A, B, C, D,

34:28Nick de Semlyen:B, C, bullet, bullet, B, B, B.

34:31Chris Hewitt:And another one that we've never done because it would have demanded at least I think 20 pages. And this was years and years ago, so it would take even more space up now. is uh do you remember this we were going to do a breakdown of what was it like the actual chronology of the marvel cinematic universe oh my god do you remember this but we were going to do it as a as a diagram as a graph as like a chart like it's like a timeline uh so like the order in which you should watch the marvel cinematic universe so you know you would start with the beginning of thor the dark world because that's like before time begins and then you would you You would stop the DVD and you would pop it out.

35:12Chris Hewitt:You would pop it in another DVD and you would watch five minutes of, I don't know, it might have been Thor and so on. And I was going to like literally break it down into chronological order. And I spent, I'm not kidding. I spent certainly days working on this. And we even had Chris Lupton and his art team working on the design of it. And it just became untenable. It just became. I love the ambition,

35:34Nick de Semlyen:but I have questions about who would read it and what would become of their minds. but yeah it's good you've got to dream big and not everything works out for various reasons you know I've long wanted to do a face off reunion where Nicolas Cage and John Travolta pretend to be each other but I have actually done that feature and it didn't work I did it for a film called The Change Up talking of Ryan Reynolds we've done so many Ryan Reynolds in conversation with another actor pieces I don't know why we just have done a lot of them but it was Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman and in the movie they swap bodies and so I had the idea of the interview, they will pretend to be each other.

36:12Nick de Semlyen:And I will ask Ryan Reynolds questions as if he's Jason Bateman, and you'll have to tell me about the making of Teen Wolf. Now, two problems happened with this. I went to New York, I went to the hotel, I walked in the room, and the PRs had told me, yeah, yeah, they've been briefed. They're really into the idea. I went in, and neither of them had a clue what I was talking about. That was the first problem. The second problem is they actually did it, and bless them, because they did a brilliant job like both of them were really funny especially ryan reynolds and they were great but then when you read it in print it doesn't make any sense because you can't visualize it's it didn't work

36:45Chris Hewitt:i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna pull you up on that one i think it does i think it does work i think it was a really really funny the result was really funny in the end you just have to wrap your head around the premise but sometimes it doesn't work i had an idea years and years ago we actually did this and in hindsight i can now reveal like it doesn't work uh dominic cooper played two roles in a film called oh god the devil's disciple or something like that it was about

37:09Nick de Semlyen:he plays Adam Hussein

37:11Chris Hewitt:and I had the idea that we actually did a shoot with Dominic Cooper as two different people essentially and the idea was that he would be interviewing himself and he couldn't quite grasp the concept and it wasn't through no fault of his own it was a nebulous concept that I thought was going to rock. And we made it work in the end, kind of. But, you know, it was like him coming up with questions to ask himself, and it just didn't entirely land. He's a lovely, lovely guy, and he was very, very game and went for it. But I think looking back, yeah, probably that one didn't work, Nibes. But anyway.

37:50Chris Hewitt:Anyway, let's not dwell too much on our failures. Let's focus more on glorious, glorious triumphs, such as this issue, which is out right now in all good, evil, and virtual news agents. And you can pick it up along with Nick. What is that you're holding in your hand?

38:05Nick de Semlyen:I want to say one final but glorious thing. We alluded to it earlier, but we have not just a glorious issue, but we have a glorious bonus issue, which is a special 16-page magazine that we have made in partnership with our friends at Leica in Portland. and it's all about their new movie Wildwood which I am extremely excited for. I was on set I think three years ago Chris Lupton and I went to Portland and we visited the set of Wildwood. This has been a movie they have been making for a very, very long time. Travis Knight, the director has written a welcome letter for this magazine and he explains just how long this has taken and just how slow it has been but everything I've seen of this film is beautiful And yeah, we have teamed up with Laika to do a 16-page preview, which kind of guides you through this world.

38:56Nick de Semlyen:It's about, you know, they've made Coraline, they've made Kubo and the Two Strings, Missing Link, all of these classics. And this one is Wildwood. It's about a young teenager in Portland called Prue. And she goes into a forest across a bridge and ends up in a mysterious, magical world. And she's trying to get her baby brother back. It's been stolen by crows, which is not ideal. And yeah, it's all kind of incredible stop-motion artistry. It's a good read, I've got to say.

39:28Chris Hewitt:That is bundled with the current issue of Empire Magazine on sale on all good evil and virtual news agents. And it is a bargain. A bargain at 10 times the price, Nick. That's what I would say. Of course, if you don't already subscribe to Empire, you can do so by, well, a couple of methods, really. You can sign up for the Empire VIP Club, which is great. So it gives you your magazine subscription. It gives you access to Empire Plus, which is the podcast one-stop shop that brings you ad-free versions of every Empire podcast, plus access to all our spoiler specials, plus some shows that aren't available on the regular timeline as well.

40:06Chris Hewitt:Plus you get access, potential access to the VIP Club events that we host in London. um there's at least what six lows a year sometimes more so that's very very exciting so you can do that empireonline.com forward slash vip or you can just sign up for a subscription to the magazine which obviously gets the magazine nice and early and we have a great summer deal on i just wanted

40:27Nick de Semlyen:to mention yeah it's three issues for five pounds um that's good and check it out it's a really good deal and that is on until well for the next few weeks and you get those amazing subs covers as well which is which is fantastic yeah yeah yeah every every month it's the only place you can get them they have some there are some really beautiful ones coming up very excited about the rest of this year i gotta say we got yeah yeah cool stuff yeah i know what's i know what's in the works and it's uh very very cool indeed indeed all right well that has been shameless

40:55Chris Hewitt:are you wrapping up the show i've told you about this i have to go i gotta go too i genuinely have

41:01Nick de Semlyen:to go um but it's been it's been fun uh talking about our failed ideas and and some that worked yeah

41:08Chris Hewitt:yeah the odd one worked alright Nick that is it for the shameless plug thank you guys for listening maybe we'll do another listener question thing soon for the next issue maybe we'll do that that'll be fun we'll sit down hopefully in studio and do that that'll be a ton of fun in the meantime it is goodbye from my one colleague of such lethal cunning goodbye Nick adios and it's goodbye from me I'm off to think more about this true chronology of the MCU it could actually be the thing that breaks my brain after all this time oh no thanks for listening see you next time bye bye