It's Doomsday on the Empire Podcast, folks. Following the bombshell Hall H announcement at San Diego Comic-Con that Robert Downey Jr. is going to return to the MCU, crucially not as Tony Stark but as legendary Latvian supervillain Doctor Doom, many of you asked that we record a special podcast dedicated to the news. Unfortunately we were unable to do that. Fortunately however, we do make up for it on this week's episode as Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, and Amon Warmann lock themselves in the pod booth and spend much of the movie news section scratching their heads and speculating wildly about the news and what it means. It's a long section, so if you're an MCU-sceptic, here's a helpful timecode so you can skip ahead [42:38 - 1:02:20 approx]. If you're in the tank for Marvel's multiversal madness however, the team do also talk about the new Fantastic Four movie title, Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World news, and the once rumoured but now confirmed news of the Russo Brothers' MCU return for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Elsewhere, our intrepid podding trio tackle a totally apropos of nothing in particular and certainly not Marvel-related listener question about actors who should return to a franchise as a villain (what were the chances, eh?). Plus we've got reviews of Sean Wang's coming-of-age writer-directorial debut Didi, Michael Morpurgo animated adaptation Kensuke's Kingdom, and another beloved children's book's screen reworking, Harold And The Purple Crayon. And that's not all folks, no siree. Our guests this week are the wonderful Joan Chen, star of Twin Peaks and Didi, who has a lovely chat with friend of the pod Mike Muncer [22:14 - 39:00 approx]. And you also get a tantalising morsel of a conversation about The Conversation between Chris and that film's editor and sound wizard, Walter Murch [1:12:25 - 1:29:42 approx]. As ever, please do enjoy — Doom commands it to be so!
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