Matt Damon is no stranger to big productions, but as he tells us in the new issue of Empire, he’d never seen anything quite like the set of The Great Wall, the most expensive film ever produced in China. Take a look at our world exclusive image, showing him peering over the iconic wall from a great height. Is he inspecting the battlefield? Or walking the plank? It's not entirely clear. Click to embiggen.
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“I kind of felt like I was making a Hollywood movie in the 1940s,” Damon says, speaking from Beijing in the new issue. “The scale of it was so massive. We’d go to work and there’d be 500 extras all in battle armour. It felt like one of those old MGM musicals, or like I was making a movie with Cecil B. DeMille. It was absolutely overwhelming, in the best way possible.”
“I would have done this if it were a tiny little kitchen-sink drama, but it turned out to be this giant popcorn movie,” Damon continues. “The chance to stand next to one of the great visionary directors in the world as he paints on the largest canvas he’s ever been given was something I couldn’t pass up.”
There’s plenty more on 2017’s most fascinating, enormous, dragon-sized blockbuster in the new issue of Empire, with six pages of coverage, and more interviews with Damon, Legendary studio CEO Thomas Tull, producer Charles Roven, and that aforementioned visionary director Zhang Yimou.
Plus, the usual film-related fun, with over 150 pages of cinematic goodness. Pick up of Empire from all good and evil newsagents, on sale now. Or subscribe to Empire here{