In the new episode of Film Stories with Simon Brew, the festive favourite realised on a slim budget, and a British Christmas film that had to battle to get to the screen.
It's well known that Warner Bros passed on 1990's Home Alone, but even when Fox picked the project up, the budget was tight - leading to some neighbourhood disturbance.
Get Santa was read ... Show More
May 11
Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003), and one hell of a challenge to secure the Terminator rights
After 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron's interest in making a third Terminator movie seemed to wane. However, that didn't stop others trying to take things forward. And whilst Arnold Schwarzenegger would, for many years, insist that he'd only make T3 with Cameron, ... Show More
1h 1m
May 4
Contact (1997) and how it nearly fell apart, plus David Frankel on The Devil Wears Prada 2
Robert Zemeckis' 1997 film of Carl Sagan's Contact is a remarkably grown-up science fiction movie for a summer blockbuster. Starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey, it took nearly 20 years to bring the story to the screen - and along the way, Mad Max director George Miller ... Show More
1h 23m
Apr 28
Cape Fear (1991), and when Martin Scorsese read it three times and hated it
It's pretty well known that originally, Steven Spielberg was interested in directing a remake of Cape Fear, and that Martin Scorsese held the rights to what became Schindler's List. That the two then swapped projects. Yet that's just part of the story. In this episode of Film Sto ... Show More
47m 47s
Dec 2021
#494 — Steven Spielberg, Noomi Rapace, Andrew Garfield
This week's Empire Podcast is the penultimate episode of the year, but we've brought you some cracking early Christmas presents. First up, the legendary Steven Spielberg returns to the pod to tell Chris Hewitt all about why he's remade West Side Story, and his experiences working ... Show More
2h 6m
Dec 2021
The Newscast Christmas Party 2021
...and you're invited! Singer Jessie Ware and her mum/podcast co-host Lennie, Radio 1’s Greg James and author Bella Mackie, plus filmmaker Richard Curtis and broadcaster Emma Freud, are the special guests at Newscast's virtual Christmas party this year. A bit of a family affair!I ... Show More
44m 5s
Dec 2021
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Shane Black
As the writer of movies like Lethal Weapon, The Nice Guys, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Iron Man 3, Shane Black is a true screenwriting auteur, known for his scripts' pulse-racing action, quippy dialogue and genre-skewing surprises. At the heart of his stories are usually two odd- ... Show More
1h 18m
Dec 2021
Christmas Classics: Home Alone 2
You can mess with a lot of things dear listener, but you can't mess with kids on Christmas (especially ones who know how to throw a brick at your face). Today we're delving into a Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Daniel Stern classic - Home Alone 2: Lost in New York! Whether he re ... Show More
49m 33s