The Shameless Plug #10: The Odyssey Odyssey

0:15Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt, welcome to the latest episode of The Shameless Plug, the show in which I sit down every month with Empire's editor Nick Dissemblian and we talk about what's in the brand new issue of Empire If you have already bought the issue and you have read and enjoyed the issue, you might want to know more about how the sausage got made. Or if you haven't bought the issue, if you're on the fence about buying this particular issue of Empire or maybe subscribing to Empire, then hopefully our tales behind the curtain will entice you to go down to your nearest newsagent, good, evil, or virtual, and part with your hard-earned cash for this incredible issue of Empire Magazine.

0:57Oh, my word. Nick, welcome. Chris, hey. Pleasure to be here with you again. Although, did we really need to record this inside a large wooden horse? Nick, this is my process. Do not question it. Okay. It took ages to build it. But fine. Yes, welcome to our Odyssey issue. It has been an Odyssey in itself to make it. It has been. This is issue 448. 450 looming just around the corner, Nick. In fact, we're working on it right now. are there any special plans for issue 450? Maybe. There aren't, are there, Nick? Hang on, I gotta go. We all see. Every issue is in itself a celebration. Every day is Christmas Eve, and especially on this day, issue 448, January 2026.

1:44Do not be put off by the fact that it is December 3rd as we're recording this. This is the January 2026 issue on the cover. A giant wooden horse. Yes. Is this the first giant wooden horse on the Empire cover? That's a very good question. Let's get our people on it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a database. Also, a ripped, pumped Matt Damon also on the cover. For on the cover, in case you haven't guessed, genuine world exclusive, folks. I mean, they're all world exclusives. We're constantly first to the big stories in Empire. Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey. Yes. Yeah. And Nick himself wrote this story.

2:31I did. I did. I am stupendously excited for this film, and that's only ratcheted up further since doing this story. I shout out in my Ed's letter this month, Mr. Bradby, my Latin teacher, who would regale us at school with tales. You had a Latin teacher? Yeah. Jesus. why how old are you it's a little bit dead poet society it is so yeah it's um so yeah would greek mythology has always been like a big thing for me I love it um I love this story I think I tweeted about five or six years ago like why is nobody doing the Iliad and the Odyssey as a big epic I actually was thinking like it would be a big HBO series yep with like a series on each I didn't dream that it would be a giant movie directed by Christopher Nolan but I'm really happy it is but he did he did He's been thinking about this for some time, right?

3:23He dreamed a little bigger. And this film sounds like it's gigantic. Huge, huge shoot all over the world. The story is massive. It takes place over 10 years. It follows, if you've seen Troy, it's basically what happens after Troy. It's a sequel to Troy. Yeah. Yeah, it's Troy 2. Do you remember who plays the DCU's sin, Troy? Sean Bean. Sean Bean. All to see what you can do. Yeah. So, yeah, it's going to be epic. An epic of epic, epicness. Sean Bean has become Matt Damon. Just for the sake of clarity, The Odyssey is not an official sequel to Wolfgang Peterson's Troy. Although, Christopher Nolan, and I believe this was the first time he's confirmed it on the record, he confirmed that he was lined up to direct Troy and he worked on Troy.

4:08What? And then Wolfgang Peterson was going to do Batman v Superman, and essentially that fell through, and Wolfgang Peterson came back to Troy and Christopher Nolan stepped aside. Now, that was mentioned by David S. Goya in a podcast recently, and so I asked Nolan about it, and he confirmed it. All right. Well, Nick, tell us about this, because this is a genuine world exclusive. There has only been paparazzi shots from the set of The Odyssey, which has been filming for a whole bunch of months in locations around the world. There was, of course, the teaser trailer, which debuted a couple of months ago, but only in cinemas, and really didn't have a huge glimpse at this movie.

4:51You, we have, I mean, you have the first interview with Chris Nolan about this. You have the first interview with Matt Damon about this. We have the first images from the movie, the first official images from the movie. We have behind-the-scenes images from the movie. We have confirmation of character names. That's how secret this film is. Like, apart from Matt Damon and kind of Tom Holland, who you saw in the teaser trailer, it wasn't out there at all who pretty much any of these big stars were playing. We really were. I mean, this is as kind of top secret an issue as we've done for a very, very long time.

5:25When we did Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, which we didn't have the title for when we did that cover, we called it Indiana Jones 5. That was before anyone had, I believe it was just before the trailer dropped, so it was like the first images of anyone from that film. But yeah, this is super, super secret. and yeah it was I'm very relieved it's out in the world because I've been kind of like you know I was having dreams about this issue leaking and things going online and obviously when it did get revealed there was a lot of excitement online but yeah it's one of those where you don't want to be the person who accidentally leaks Christopher Nolan's you know the first look at his film so it's all been very kind of worked out and luckily it went okay and I haven't been taken out I did live tweet to make it out of the issue I don't know if you noticed yeah Yeah.

6:13I went, Nick has just finished his Odyssey cover story. It was amazing. Hashtag Odyssey. Hashtag Empire. Hashtag Big Reveal. Hashtag coming soon. No one seemed to notice. I was wondering why you were standing just behind me while I was writing it and asking me to repeat words. Hashtag blessed. So, Nick, tell us all about how this came about. This is incredible. You went to Los Angeles where Christopher Nolan lives, and you sat down with him for how long? this is an incredible coup it's been a long time in the making so obviously we we checked him for Oppenheimer and then we did a Nolan special which was last summer where we talked to him and his wife producer Emma Thomas the great Emma Thomas and funnily enough Alex Godfrey our colleague who did that interview yes accidentally worked out his next project by asking them a question involving the phrase you Trojan horse sort of like you know complex stuff into blockbusters and they didn't break a sweat I think they didn't look it out no but they were very cool and calm and later I asked them both Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas about this and they said they did have a chat after the interview it was the first thing when the Zoom call ended they looked at each other and Emma Thomas was a bit like everything he knows and then they were like no no no they don't know no because Alex said Trojan horse if Nolan and if Chris Nolan and Emma Thomas had gone, what?

7:42What do you mean by that? That's a strange phrase. What? I don't know anything about a Trojan horse. That's probably what I would do. If I was working on a secret adaptation of The Odyssey, I would go, how do you know? I would just immediately give it away. But they're made of more... Sterner stuff. Sterner stuff. So anyway, that kind of tickled me after it was announced that we had used that phrasing. This is huge. But anyway, no, we've been working very closely with them, with Universal, the studio. it's been a long conversation and you know there's going to be more to come this is just the beginning of the Odyssey and the Odyssey Odyssey yeah and it was super exciting I flew to LA and I went to Syncope in a plane and I sat in a boardroom with Christopher Nolan with some posters and he had a Cobb salad and I had a hence my terrible joke about Dom Cobb salad which I didn't say to him on the day but I was like ooh I've got a joke and And we chatted and it was the first time he has talked about it.

8:44As he talks about, two million feet of film they shot for this. It was a huge epic. Huge epic. They're shooting on it. The whole thing is the first film ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras. He's been out at sea for months. They shot the whole film this year. They started in February, ended in August. And I spoke to him in October. So it was still very recent and he was just getting into the edit. He had cut something together, which he showed me, which I describe in the piece. But it was an amazing experience. I mean, it was an amazing experience. And he was kind of working out, you know, and some stuff he's not ready to talk about yet.

9:18Some stuff he was kind of figuring out as we chatted. And then at the end, he's like, oh, do you want to come and see a bit of it? And I was like, yes, please. Okay. And it was just Christopher Nolan and I just walked around the corner into his screening room and he stood behind me and he was holding an iPad. He was fiddling with it and some curtains opened and the screens, it was pretty cool. and I watched it it was like a 4DX thing you've got the director have you ever had that where you've got was he shaking your chair and spraying water in your face not quite okay that would have been that would have been great but yeah I mean it was it was six minutes and it was you know as I say in the piece it was pretty damn intense and pretty amazing I had that with Tarantino where I watched I was in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood edit suite with him and his editor Fred Raskin and he was like oh you're the first person I'm going to show something to and he showed me about ten minutes and it was great because A, the footage was great but B, he was howling.

10:12He was laughing his head off. It was like he had never seen it before. And he wrote it, he shot it, he's edited it but he was very entertained. But yeah, having Christopher Nolan standing behind you in a room while you watch it. Because you're like, how do I, can I react? What do I do? Do I cry? Do I laugh? It's not a comedy. Oh God, what if I laugh? I started a Mexican wave at one point. It didn't catch on. But it was amazing. It was really cool. And then about a week later, I did another hour on Zoom with Matt Damon, who was in New York. And again, his first time talking about the Odyssey. His dog was yelping.

10:56My cat was coming in and meowing, and then his dog was coming in and yelping. And so we had the whole animal kingdom against us. But he was ecstatic about this film. he said with no hesitation it's the best time he's ever had making a film and do you want a fact do you want a fun extra detail that is not in the piece yeah hit me with it his weight this film is 167 pounds I didn't put that in the piece because it's boring but I'm now going to share it here on the shameless plug we'd like to bring a bit of you know this is what keeps the people coming back month after month for the good shit the shit that was too crap to make it into the magazine Matt Damon's weight for this movie was 167 pounds.

11:37Nick, you should be ashamed of yourself. That's a disgraceful fact. Yeah. But it was funny. It was funny because I told him I had seen some of the footage and he was like, I haven't seen anything. And then he asked me to describe the footage to him. Really? And so it's very surreal. You are on a Zoom call describing a bit of the Odyssey to the star of the Odyssey. And he was going, oh, I'm so jealous. I can't believe you've got to see that. It was really surreal, but he's the nicest man, I've got to say. Yes, he is. it was super super super nice oh man yeah this is incredible Nick it was good this is incredible so this is I mean we have world exclusives in Empire all the time yeah and we have more coming up world exclusive not necessarily the Odyssey but other films as well over the next year or so but this this was a special one this is fucking cool well also I forgot to say like a week after I spoke to Matt Damon Matt Damon we got word that Christopher Nolan wanted to have another chat what and And also Hojtu Van Hoitema, his cinematographer, who's a legend, and they wanted to talk about the new IMAX technology, the new IMAX camera.

12:43They're using the blimp tech, which means that they can, they've cracked basically how to record dialogue scenes, because normally the IMAX is like, everyone says it sounds like a tractor, and by using the blimp... That's not how tractors sound. That's how, how does a tractor sound? Well, like a kind of... I think it's more of an... I don't think it is. Okay. Okay. All right. Anyway, we'll come back to that. But we'll play a tractor sound effect over this. But yeah, it basically enables them to now shoot quiet dialogue scenes with actors with IMAX cameras. So it's going to be a game changer. I think that's the word.

13:20A game changer? Nolan used the word game changer. Wow. Well, this is a game changer of a feature, but I am not going to spare you from my usual tradition, which I skipped entirely last month, where I read out the first line of each feature in a voice designed to entice people to buy it and read it. And your first line is, Interested in rumor? Huh? Gossip? Who has a story about Odysseus? You? You have the story? Well, you're not insulting me with that. You're insulting Christopher Nolan because that's a line from the teaser trailer that he wrote. So you are... Delivered by? Delivered by John Burnfall.

14:00So I'm insulting my birthday bro, John Bernthal. He and I were born exactly the same day. Interesting. Yeah, my career has turned out much better than his. I think you'll agree. It's a great feature. Read it now or read it after you listen to this podcast. It is fantastic. It also kicks off. Well, yeah, I know. I just want to quickly, before you move on, I want to mention the subscriber cover done by the great Paul Shipper, but we worked very closely with Christopher Nolan on that. Subscriber art. It's based on some imagery from the film. It is the Trojan soldiers pulling the Trojan horse towards Troy.

14:36Unbeknownst to them, there are several Greeks inside. I mean, they should have known about the Trojan horse. Yeah. I mean, I would have fallen for it. I'm not so sure I would have. Yeah. I would have gone. That is exactly the same size as a vessel in which to store people. Yeah. Who might want to murder us. Give it a shake. If you're given a large wooden horse, shake it. See if there's anything inside, like a Christmas present. But that was the sequence that I got shown, the Trojan horse scene. And I got to say, like it's for something that on paper might come off as a bit silly. It works. And there's some extra stuff that I haven't talked about, which I don't want to ruin.

15:14But there's some really cool stuff. And it's very visceral and very like, yeah, it's nerve shaking. That's exciting, isn't it? Bloody well exciting. All right. So, this is the feature that kicks off our 2026 preview, which is our look ahead to some of, not all, but some of the films that are going to be coming your way over the next few months in 2026, which obviously is just around the corner. And there's loads of great stuff in here, exclusive new images, exclusive new interviews. You talked to Sam Raimi. I talked to Sam Raimi, who is quite frankly sick of me, I'm sure, because I've talked to Sam Raimi a lot over the years.

15:54when I talked to him about his new film Send Help which is out in February and which looks absolutely terrific of course it does, it's a Sam Raimi film Rachel McAdams, Dylan O 'Brien crash landing on a desert island big power struggle, he's an asshole boss she's a put upon employee but do the tables begin to turn on the island? yes, I'm excited about it it's Raimi's first horror film since Drag Me to Hell, right? it depends how you think of all it's great and powerful but yes it's his first official horror film since then well I gotta say respect to I believe Ian Friis sorry if this is being credited wrong but Sam Raimi's Desert Island Risks is the cell is it is that yours nope that's I believe Ian Friis I just deliver the copy and then I let the headlines and the cells fall where they may are your ones are good too I mean that's alright there's so much great stuff inside the issue Riz Ahmed on his new version of Hamlet.

16:55Yeah. We got Hamnet. We got Hamlet. Do we have Hamnet? God, I haven't got to that bit yet. This is amazing. We have Maggie Chillenhall on her new movie, The Bride, which is a wild version of the story of The Bride of Frankenstein. I believe. I haven't seen it yet, but that seems to be the case for sure. More films should have an exclamation mark. I think The Odyssey should have one. I think Hamnet should have one. Hamlet should definitely have one. The Rip should have one. The Rip is the new movie from Joe Carnahan, which is out on Netflix in January. And it reunites your pal, Matt Damon, with his pal, Ben Affleck.

17:34They are together at last again in this movie. It is a rollicking cop thriller. And I spoke to Joe Carnahan about that. We have Daredevil Born Again. We have Nouvelle Fague, which is a new film from Richard Linklater, which is about the making of Breathless. May we? Not the good one, but Richard Gere, but the other one. I love that. Such a great, such a great. If you want to improve your day, go to YouTube, type in Breathless 1983. Last scene. Watch the last scene of the Richard Gere Breathless. It will improve your day. Do you know I've never seen it? I haven't brought myself. Tarantino maintains it's better than the original.

18:11Tarantino maintains a lot of things. Yes, he does. That man has interesting opinions on movies, shall we say. We have a look at the Moana live-action remake, which is exciting. We have one of the first words, if not the first word, Nick, on Coyote vs. Acme, which is the much delayed and very nearly deleted movie about Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. And I'm excited that it's finally seen the light of day. I enjoyed. Amon Warman spoke to the director of Coyote vs. Acme. I love this quote. We want, talking about Wile E. Coyote, the director says, we want to pop the myth and get into his soul and show you what really makes him tick.

18:48and that is an amazing sentence about a cartoon coyote. But I'm here for it. I love Wile E. Coyote. Doobie-loo! I just want to see him fall off a cliff. That's what I want to see. But I'm excited about the movie. Well, okay. Well, we've also got Fuse, the new film from David McKenzie with Aaron Taylor-Johnson's F-U-Said-E. It's a heist thriller. That looks exciting. That's in the preview as well. We have Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian and Grogu. Yes, Ben Travis, our resident little cute creature specialist. Oh, he's so cute. There's Grogu's, there's Babby Fricks. He was in Hog Heaven. Yes, he was.

19:24He talked to Favs, our mate Favs. We have a look at the brand new, this is brand new, isn't it? New Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. That's exciting. That's all in there. Corin Hardy's new film, Whistle, had a really fun interview with Corin Hardy. It's about a death whistle. And if you hear it, you hear its cry, then you are marked for death, like Steven Seagal in the film Nico. And that is, that's an interview where Karin actually blew the death whistle. Oh my God. I have a sound recording of that that I might insert into this shameless plug right now. This is an excerpt.

19:59This is something Karin Hardy sent me. He sent me a voice note of him blowing the death whistle. Have a listen. Okay, Chris, you asked for this. I need to do some kind of legal disclaimer in case, you know you're found in some kind of bizarre um contorted perishment position i like to call it so this is the sound of a death whistle i'll give you one last chance to pause it right now before i blow it or otherwise i'm gonna count down from three and uh i hope that the recording device on this iphone successfully captures this sound The death whistle in our film is called in choker, which means the cry.

20:50Here it comes. You've been warned. Three, two, one.

21:06I'll speak to you soon. I hope that you make it through the next few days. That is an exclusive. That's the kind of thing you only get on the shameless plug. You only get, yeah. The fact that we're both going to die horribly now is only a small inconvenience. Yes, I should have mentioned that everyone who listens to that excerpt will now die. You will die. You will die horribly. But thank you, and please subscribe. Re-up your subscription before you get it. Yes, in fact, if you could re-up your subscription in perpetuity, in fact, if you could insert it into your will, that even in the event of your inevitable, horrible death after having listened to that, that you wish to subscribe to the Empire Podcast, the spoiler specials the VIP club Nick do you have anything that you want people to subscribe to just set up a transfer into my account we don't ask for much we don't ask for much but we do ask for all of that please we have Jesse Buckley and Paul Meskel on their new film Hamnet the mild cigar which is really exciting that's going to be an Oscar front runner it seems like Jesse Buckley has one hand if not two hands around the best actress statue already that's exciting we have the new Charlize Theron action movie Apex we have a look at the magic faraway tree which Alex Godfrey and I are very excited we've had many conversations about the magic faraway tree and I used to read it when I was a kid I used to love it the Sandman scared the shit out of me all the lands at the top of the tree some of them are very frightening and it has this interview has made my favorite quote with the whole issue sorry Christopher Nolan does it where somebody involved in the magic faraway tree describes it as Waitrose meets Star Wars well there you go I'm sold Simon Farnaby is involved with that, so I'm sold.

22:43Toy Story 5, we have a look at that. That is exciting. We have the new Ashley Walters movie, Animal, spelled A-N-I-M-O-L. It's a preview of interesting spellings. We need to get a sub-editor out to Hollywood's dad. No offense to people involved in this. No offense, indeed. What a cracking preview, Nick. Pretty cracking. Cracking preview. Pretty preview-y. It's very preview-y. And because of that, that the features section of the magazine doesn't have as many features, out-and-out features in it as you might normally get. It's tight. It's tight. It's tight. But what is in there is absolutely incredible.

23:23Obviously, you have the Odyssey feature. The next one, the next proper big meaty feature is a sit-down with James Cameron. Is this the final step on the path to Pandora, Nick? Well, not quite. The final step in print, we have just announced we are going to be doing an early screening of Avatar Fire and Ash for Empire VIP members if you come to that you're going to see the film a full week ahead of it coming out a full week? a full week out of it being in cinemas but yeah this is the last bit we've been doing something every single month for a year now it's been epic and to end it we decided to end it as we began with a James Cameron interview and we have thrown your questions at him we asked for we asked for questions and we got well over 2 ,000.

24:112 ,000 questions all of them from James Dyer on burner accounts. Some of them were strangely sexual. We didn't expect quite so many to be about the Na 'vi mating habits. I'm not joking here that we got a lot of those which we have filtered let's put it that way. But we have had some nerdy questions some great stuff and this is a blast to read this. He is fantastic. He's one of those guys who will answer anything you love at him. And yeah someone tried to catch him out I think on the Pandoran cycle of time like how much time given the moons and the suns he had an answer he had you can bet he had an answer he has an answer for everything it was incredibly confusing for me but it makes sense to him I'm convinced these are all these are all from James James Dyer who did the interview with Jim Cameron and I'm just convinced because only James only he would be so bold as to ask about Pandoran time cycles and pulse rifle sound effects.

25:07He has his watch set to Pandora time. He does. And Navi, I'm looking at him right now. James is recording the Pilot TV podcast through the window in the other studio. I'm looking at him right now. He has the aspect, Nick, of someone who would ask about Navi's fucking. He's gesticulating wildly and I assume he's talking about some kind of avatar Navi related minutiae judging by Boyd and Kaye's expressions. Even now, he's doing some elaborate Navi fan fiction. Jake Sully and Natiri and maybe Pyakan involved as well. It's quite graphic. I don't want to get into it. But there you go. Anyway, so I'm going to give James the opening line treatment.

25:45James Cameron's stay on Pandora. Yeah, because I didn't get the voice right for yours. I'm so sorry. James Cameron's stay on Pandora is drawing to a close. Chaffers. Oh, yeah. Right away. But you're not reading the twist at the end of that. There's a twist. For now. For now. Oh, I didn't see the twist. Oh, yeah. For now. Now, next feature, there's three big features. The preview is a huge Uber feature, all of its own, featuring many little mini features. But the big feature that ends the section is Tim and Pee-wee's Big Adventure is the headline. You'll never guess what it's about. It's the 40th, Jesus, anniversary of Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

26:27And Alex sat down with Tim Burton. Legends only. He's going for Burton. Legends, I knew this issue. Yes, Tim Burton's first film. And there's a Criterion, I remember, like a Criterion release was announced for this and you and Alex had a chat about it and he was like, why don't we try and see if Tim Burton wants to talk about it? Yes. He did want to talk about it and he was fantastic. And I think Alex got a big chunk of time with him and yeah, just reminiscing about making his first ever movie. The Highs, The Lows, working with Paul Rubens. It is a really fun read. Paul Rubens, who's Paul Rubens?

27:00Pee-wee. What? Pee-wee. but P.B. Herman is a real person. I'll explain it to you after. What the fuck? Opening line of Alex's feature, Fish swim outside P.B. Herman's window. There you go. That's great. You learn from this piece, among many other fascinating bits of lore, that Tim Burton, at the premiere of this film, sat next to Mr. T. Imagine the small talk.

27:28At least Mr. T wasn't sitting behind Tim Burton, because with that voluminous hair, that's not the best person to sit behind when you're watching a movie. I pity the fool. I pity the fool who sits behind Tim Burton at a screen. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember when we did Pint of Milk with Mr. T? I do remember that. Who did that? Sam Toy. Sam Toy. We were in a room. We were all in a room listening to it. Why were we in a room? I don't know. And do you remember that it was the only time in Empire history where Pint of Milk has been rebranded? It was changed to Pint of Snickers because Mr. T was promoting Snickers at the time.

28:01and that's how we got him. And I don't think they even asked us to do it, but we changed it to Pint of Snickers. What the fuck? I don't remember that at all. I think we were all probably, there was something going on. That's wild. All right, Nick, we sadly do not have a lot of time to go through the rest of the issue. What I will say is a banging, banging, banging issue. I mean, you're going to buy this because of the Odyssey feature. The Odyssey feature is an absolute standout. Oh, Jesus Christ, I completely forgot to congratulate you. I'm not just talking to Nick Disemlian I'm talking to an award winning Nick Disemlian because was it last week?

28:37You won the BSME award for best guy Oh yeah Best Disemlian, sorry Phil My brother A real blow to Phil Disemlian You won the BSME for best editor Editor of the year Specialist, close bracket I mean it doesn't get any better than that It's my specialty Nick, I think you've just guaranteed yourself It was actually edited through a year bracket, The Specialist, because the award was given to people who have written about the Stallone Sharon Stone film. Oh, what a film. What a film. But that is an amazing, amazing accolade. What an honor it is for you. What an honor it is for you to be in this room with me.

29:14But what an honor it is for you also to have that on your mantelpiece. Is it on your mantelpiece? It's on a table. It's on a table. They've wasted on you, quite frankly. But I think you have guaranteed yourself a second consecutive award with this belting feature. You're very kind. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it right now. Thanks, Chris. I'm calling it. I'm going down to Ladbrokes and putting a thousand pounds when you win in it for next year. Anyway, real quick, my section, there's good stuff in it. You know what it is. It's the final cut section. It's a section that looks at home entertainment releases.