Natalie Dormer Finds New Thriller In Darkness

She's co-written and will star in the tale of violence and vengeance

Usually to be found trying to finagle her way into power on Game Of Thrones, Natalie Dormer is working on something different for her next film, In Darkness.

She’s co-written the script alongside Thrones veteran Ed Skrein, Stacy Martin and Anthony Byrne, who will start calling the shots early next year. Dormer is set to star as a blind musician who hears what she believes is a violent murder in the flat above her. When she investigates, she’s drawn into London’s seedy underbelly, and encounters violence and danger.

But is there more to her than first might appear? According to Variety’s report, she’ll have her own agenda. While they’re not mentioned in the cast, we’d expect Skrein and Martin to also have roles in the film, which will start looking for distribution deals at the American Film Market next week.

Dormer has The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 out on November 19, and has worked on horrors The Forest and Patient Zero, the latter of which co-stars Matt Smith and arrives here on September 2 next year. Skrein will be Ajax in Deadpool, landing February 4, while Martin is in Ben Wheatley’s High Rise, currently without a solid UK release date.

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Allison Janney Joins The Girl On The Train

Playing a police detective

Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Jared Leto and Justin Theroux are already all aboard, but The Girl On The Train is still accepting more passengers. Allison Janney is the latest to join the ensemble cast for Tate Taylor's adaptation of Paula Hawkins' bestseller. 

Erin Cressida Wilson wrote the screenplay from the much buzzed-about book, which drew comparisons to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for its narrative. We’ll caution that even the basic synopsis might be considered a spoiler, but read on if you wish… The story follows a recently divorced woman called Rachel (Blunt) struggling with her life and sinking into alcoholism to try to cope. She spies a seemingly perfect couple from her London train ride every day and starts to fantasise about their lives. But things take a turn when she sees something shocking…

Janney will play a police detective, continuing a working relationship with Taylor that's already taken in the likes of The Help, Get On Up and Pretty Ugly People. The director should be cranking his cameras soon for DreamWorks, aiming for an October 7, 2016 release in the States.

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Kristen Stewart And Chloe Sevigny Circling Lizzie Borden Biopic

It's a trick - get an axe!

Played just this year and last in a pair of campy Christina Ricci movies for the Lifetime Channel, famous axe murderer Lizzie Borden is also heading to the cinema screen in yet another project. Belgian director Pieter Van Hees (Waste Land) will direct an as-yet-untitled psychological thriller based on Borden's sordid story, with Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart both in line to star.

"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks," goes the rhyme. "When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41."

Borden was actually acquitted of the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts, but she remains the prime suspect for Bordenologists who continue to study the case. Other potential perps that have been suggested include the Bordens' live-in maid Bridget Sullivan, Lizzie's sister Emma, her illegitimate half-brother William, and her uncle John Morse.

In the new film, Sevigny will take the role of Lizzie, while Stewart is in talks to play Bridget (Lizzie's lesbian lover according to some versions of the legend). Newcomer Bryce Kass is writing the screenplay, with Naomi Despres (Zero Effect, Kill The Messenger) producing. The project will be looking for deals at the American Film Market, which kicks off next week.

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Kristen Stewart And Chole Sevigny Circling LIzzie Borden Biopic

It's a trick - get an axe!

Played just this year and last in a pair of campy Christina Ricci movies for the Lifetime Channel, famous axe murderer Lizzie Borden is also heading to the cinema screen in yet another project. Belgian director Pieter Van Hees (Waste Land) will direct an as-yet-untitled psychological thriller based on Borden's sordid story, with Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart both in line to star.

"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks," goes the rhyme. "When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41."

Borden was actually acquitted of the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts, but she remains the prime suspect for Bordenologists who continue to study the case. Other potential perps that have been suggested include the Bordens' live-in maid Bridget Sullivan, Lizzie's sister Emma, her illegitimate half-brother William, and her uncle John Morse.

In the new film, Sevigny will take the role of Lizzie, while Stewart is in talks to play Bridget (Lizzie's lesbian lover according to some versions of the legend). Newcomer Bryce Kass is writing the screenplay, with Naomi Despres (Zero Effect, Kill The Messenger) producing. The project will be looking for deals at the American Film Market, which kicks off next week.

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Empire Issue Preview: The Revenant, The Hunger Games and Oscars 2016

The new issue hits newsstands

This month's new issue sees Empire braving the spaces between Arkham Asylum's walls to get up close and personal with the supervillains from David Ayer's hotly-anticipated Suicide Squad. From Jared Leto's Joker to Will Smith's Deadshot, our on-set world exclusive reveals all you need to know about DC's crack skwad. You just have to make the gruelling decision whether to choose the Deadshot, Joker, Harley Quinn or Enchantress cover...

But there is far more to feast on than just the grime of Gotham. Having won the Best Director Oscar earlier this year for Birdman, Alejandro González Iñárritu looks primed to head into the 2016 bidding battlefield with Di Caprio-starring survival tale The Revenant. Joining him in our Oscar interview madness are Bryan Cranston, Eddie Redmayne, Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan to name a mere few. Oh, and a young up-and-coming actor called Johnny Depp. Anyone?

As well as the latest news and reviews, there's a first look at the Coens' Hail, Caesar!, Duncan Jones gives us the lowdown on Warcraft, and we extend a three-finger salute to Jennifer Lawrence and co. as the seemingly unstoppable franchise force that is The Hunger Games comes to a close.

Pick up the new issue of Empire from all good newsagents and high-surveillance facilities today.

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New Look At Suicide Squad's Killer Croc

And Amanda Waller takes a sinister bow

World meet the Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad meet... okay, never mind. Empire’s December issue debuts some of the most twisted, antisocial bunch of psychopaths we've ever run into - to paraphrase Ralph Meeker in The Dirty Dozen - and the squad’s ensemble of gnarly crims have now been unleashed over a series of spectacular new covers. Here are some exclusive stills from the film to fill in some gaps, including, to kick off, a closer look at the villain of a piece that’s hardly short of villainous types to chose from.

Amanda Waller – played, of course, by Angela Bassett in Green Lantern and Cynthia Addai-Robinson in Arrow – is given menacing new life in Suicide Squad by double-Oscar nominee Viola Davis. Waller is, officially at least, the government apparatchik who'll be giving out the squad’s orders. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. As this exclusive on-set image hints, she’s no Agent Coulson.

“She’s relentless in her villainy,” Davis tells Empire. “When you look at her, there’s nothing that seems dangerous. Her only power is her intelligence and her complete lack of guilt.” To emphasise the stress on the latter, Davis points out that she read a book called Confessions Of A Sociopath to prep for the role. Note, too, the identity parade of Suicide Squad-ers behind her, presumably being sold by Waller as a viable - and deniable - means of achieving Task Force X’s shady goals.

More likely to be reading Confessions Of A Human Dustbin is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc. This lethal luggage is better known as Waylon Jones and, as the actor who plays him explains, “he’s a cannibal with rage issues”.

The picture below shows him with one of the current and future DC universe’s main events: Margot Robbie’s mischief-making Harley Quinn. “She’s a fan fave,” producer Suicide Squad Richard Suckle elaborates. “Funny, crazy, scary... You can’t come up with enough adjectives to describe all the different things you see her do.”

Quinn is, of course, ever-more entwined with a malign influence we initially find incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. Jared Leto’s Joker may be straitjacketed in this still, but his power over Quinn’s doctor is obvious right there in their body language.



Finally comes Cara Delevingne's Enchantress. Much more than just an emo Scarlet Witch, the Brit's sorceress is an ancient force who’s unleashed in the movie. “She’s been trapped for so long,” Delevingne reveals ominously, “and now she’s finally been let out”.

For much more on Suicide Squad, alongside Empire's big Oscars special, the final chapter of The Hunger Games and a look at the brutal making of Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant, pick up the new Empire. It’s on sale right now, donchaknow.

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New Trailer For The Night Before

Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt get christ-mashed

It’s nearly November, so you’re in a Christmas mood, right? Even if not, you might be prepared to see the new – ish, there’s not a load of fresh footage – promo for Seth Rogen’s new seasonal comedy. But regardless, the latest trailer for The Night Before is online.

This one hails from the 50/50 team that also includes director Jonathan Levine and co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and this new comedy adds Anthony Mackie for the story of three dudes who have a long-standing Christmas Eve tradition. The trio have headed out for the past 14 years on the night before Christmas for some drinking, dining and general debauchery. 

But now they’re realising that things have changed – Mackie’s Chris has become famous and is recognised wherever they go, while Rogen’s Isaac is about to have a baby with wife Jillian Bell. So they decide to have one last night to remember, filled with drugs (supplied by Isaac’s other half) and access to New York’s hottest party. As you might expect, things go a little crazy... 

Levine is working from a script he wrote alongside Ariel Shaffir, Kyle Hunter and Rogen’s writing/ producing partner Evan Goldberg. With Heléne Yorke, Lizzy Caplan and Aaron Hill in the cast, The Night Before hits US cinemas on November 20 and is scheduled to arrive here on December 4.

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Peter Sarsgaard To Play Robert Kennedy In Jackie

Starring opposite Natalie Portman

We learned back in May of this year that Natalie Portman would be playing Jackie Kennedy in Jackie. Now we also know that Peter Sarsgaard is joining the film as Robert Kennedy.

Jackie chronicles the four days in Kennedy’s life after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. She’s dealing with losing the love of her life while a nation rallies around her in a time of tragedy.

Darren Aronofsky had been developing the project to star then-partner Rachel Weisz back in 2010, but it fell into limbo when they split. Portman was mooted as the new Jackie in 2012, but it has taken a few years to come together. Aronofsky remains on board as producer, with No director Pablo Larraín now calling the shots. While the cast is still not quite together and a domestic distributor remains to be found, Larrain should be starting to shoot the film in the next couple of months.

Sarsgaard will next be seen opposite Johnny Depp and Joel Edgerton in Black Mass, which is out here on November 27. He’ll follow that with chess drama Pawn Sacrifice on December 4 and is the main villain for The Magnificent Seven, landing September 23 next year. 

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Ash Vs. Evil Dead Scores A Second Season

Before the first episode even arrives

As Ash himself might say, “Groovy.” Mere days before it's set to premiere in the United States and a few other countries, Evil Dead TV series Ash Vs. Evil Dead has been renewed for a second season by American cable channel Starz.

It’s a big vote of confidence for the show, which has been getting plenty of buzz, not least for the fact that it brings full-power, old-school Evil Dead back to our screens. And it’ll be welcome news for Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert and the team who told Empire at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con that they had big plans for several seasons stewing in their brains. This also means Raimi could be getting a phone call from one of his family members thanks to fan demand that regular comedy stooge (and brother) Ted should show up…  “I heard the call loud and clear last night in the hall at the panel,” Raimi said back in July. “We actually looked for a place to put him, we couldn't find the right position that wasn't just a walk-on. If we get another season for the show, we'll definitely come up with a role that's worthy of Ted and the fans' expectations for him.” Start thinking, Sam!

The series finds Campbell’s titular, chin-tastic hero suspected as the source of a new Deadite invasion. It’s just another weight of this fantastical world loaded onto our man, who has spent 30 years avoiding both the horror of the Evil Dead and any sort of real responsibility. But he’s spurred into action by a fresh plague of Deadite swarms, which threaten all mankind, and finds both friends and foes among the human population. As Campbell explained to us at the convention, this was the team’s big chance to make things right with the faithful, and hopefully introduce a new generation to the world’s laziest action hero. “We made the remake a couple of years ago, trying to satiate fans, it didn't quite do it. They were, like, 'thanks, but where's Sam, where's Bruce?' They're not idiots, they like what they like. Now I want to tell the fans, ‘okay? Now shut the hell up!’" 

Ash Vs. Evil Dead premieres in the US on Saturday night. No UK broadcaster has yet picked up the show, but this news should help with that.

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