This week's episode of the Empire Podcast sees Chris Hewitt mark the release of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning by doing a non-spoiler, non-epic (less than 20 minutes!) chat with that film's director, the legendarily loquacious Christopher McQuarrie, [26:00 - 43:06 approx] and have a lovely natter with the stars of the new Wes Anderson film, The Phoenician Scheme, Benicio del Toro and Michael Cera. [1:01:37 - 1:15:35 approx] Right at the end of the show, we also bring you an extended excerpt from our Andor s2 spoiler chat with that show's creator, Tony Gilroy, who tells Ben Travis all about the fates of certain characters. Do not listen if you haven't seen Andor! [1:43:43 - 1:56:02 approx] Elsewhere, Chris Hewitt is joined in the podbooth by Helen O'Hara, James Dyer, and John Nugent, to talk about Cannes and Cruise, run their collective eye over the week's movie news, and review The Final Reckoning, The Phoenician Scheme, Lilo & Stitch, and Guy Ritchie's Fountain Of Youth. Enjoy.

The Shameless Plug — the show in which Chris Hewitt and Empire editor, Nick de Semlyen, sit down and talk you through the latest issue of Empire — is back for its third episode, folks. This one is dedicated to issue 441 of Empire (on sale now at all good, evil, and virtual newsagents), which features Jurassic World Rebirth on the cover, and Nick talks through the creative process behind our cover, behind his choice of writer for the feature, and drops a couple of Jurassic World tidbits that didn't make it into the article. Elsewhere, our dynamic duo chat about the choices they made in putting the issue together, Nick tackles a quiz he wrote, and Chris reads out the first line of each feature, despite Nick's protestations. Enjoy.

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's The Extraordinary Miss Flower is part-concert film, part-performance art piece inspired by the life of its subject, a woman called Geraldine Flower. When she passed away a few years ago, her daughter Zoe discovered a number of letters, written over the years by suitors of Geraldine's, which painted a picture of a wildly charismatic, enigmatic and magnetic woman. Zoe's close friend, Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini, and Zoe's husband, the musician Simon Byrt, were inspired by the letters, and thus 2024's album, Miss Flower, was born. And, not long after that, Forsyth and Pollard's film, which combines performances from Torrini and her band, with interstitial pieces featuring a host of famous faces reading aloud the letters, and Caroline Catz as the extraordinary Geraldine Flower. And in this Empire Podcast interview special, Chris Hewitt is joined in the podbooth by Zoe Flower, the film's producer and daughter of its subject, and Catz for a frank and fascinating conversation in which the word 'extraordinary' is said quite a lot. Enjoy.