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Empire moves into TV with Spielberg documentary



Film magazine Empire has moved into TV documentaries for the first time with a one-hour special about Steven Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg: The Man and His Movies is a co-production between Empire and independent producer Monkey and will air on Channel Five next month.

The Emap title's annual movie awards have been televised on Film Four and Sky Movies, but it is the first time the magazine has moved into prime time original programme-making.

The show will feature a rare in-depth interview with Spielberg and contributions from Empire editor Colin Kennedy. Timed to coincide with Spielberg's latest big screen release, The Terminal, it will include appearances from its stars Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones.

"We're really excited by the potential to use Empire's access and credibility, working with like minds at Monkey and Five, to create great TV," said Steve Buckley, the head of TV at Emap Consumer Media.

Empire is the latest Emap title to move into TV production. Two years ago FHM co-produced High Street Honeys with Wife Swap producer RDF for Sky One. Emap's other TV interests include digital music channels The Hits, The Box, Q and Kerrang!

Emap is also looking to sell the Spielberg interview abroad and will develop similar projects around Empire and other Emap titles in the future. The programme is being co-produced by Mr Buckley and Monkey's David Granger.

"I'm thrilled that we have secured such rare and interesting interviews for this insightful documentary," said Sham Sandhu, Five's controller of pop features and special events. "This establishes Five's reputation as the home for movie lovers and we intend to continue to build on this reputation with even more movie-related entertainment in the future."
Empire's production and research team was led by Ian Nathan and Ian Freer, author of definitive biography The Complete Spielberg.

Empire, which celebrated its 15th birthday earlier this year, sold a record 195,000 copies in the first six months of the year. Monkey's other credits include Channel 4's Make My Day and Five's Swag, and was founded three years ago by Mr Granger and Will MacDonald.
Mediaguardian

Am I the only one who thinks Steven Spielberg makes pants films.

How inaccurate with Jaws?

I would hardly call Schindlers List pants Emmykins. it was one of the most powerful and moving films I have ever seen. Jaws is pretty old but I guess it was ok in its time.

No, I think the same too. We can thank him for the modern blockbuster, yip ******* eee .

Schindler's List, fair enough, but what else HAS he done?

Heck, I prefer Jerry Bruckheimer to him (mainly cos Jerry's stuff is so bad, that its good...).

Sick of hollywood directors patting each other on the back and ******* sergeant ***** all the time too, i remember the top 100 directors program or whatever it was called as deduced by the AFA, and Spielberg was number one, big suprise there, with his bum-chum John Landis in second or third or something, complete codswallop. I don't think Takashi Miike was even in there at all.

he did ET. how can you not love ET?

what else does he need to do after producing a movie like that. I couldn't direct a film. I say fair place to him.

Making a film about a real event is hardly an amazing feat. Doing it with the right amount of sensitivity, etc is fair enough, but I can't stand film makers taking credit when real people suffered.

Look at Saving Private Ryan. People laugh at the part where some guy is running around looking for his arm that's been blow off. That probably really happened to someone. How can anyone take credit for having the 'intelligence' to show it in a film?

Saving Private Ryan isnt really as emotionally touching as it could be. but to the casting directors credit, Giovanni Ribisi was in it and i <3 him! :P

It's not so much if any of us could do it, it's more to do with the people who can do it but don't get the same credit as Spielberg. AI was pants but people still went on like it was the best thing since ET. ET was pants but people thought it was great. Jaws was pants because it was based on a book which has several inaccuracies about great whites despite one of the characters being a 'shark expert'

Then films like X-Men are made but it's not raved about even thought what happens in X-Men probably will happen in the future. People will mutate and suffer for being different.

If only soldiers were really that cute. Didn't see any like it in Fahrenheit 9/11. What's going on?

But seriously, it was insensitive with the arm thing wasn't it? And there are other parts of that film that take the pee a bit.

It's not just him who makes these films good either. Schindler's List was probably made great by things but influenced by Spielberg. From what I hear about him he doesn't put in the kind of effort that Peter Jackson does.

i thought it was rather insensitive. i thought the whole scene at the beginning lasted a bit too long. i dunno, i really found it quite boring. if spielberg was such a good director then he could make a film about war emotional and interesting.

I know someone who was in both Gulf wars. He cried when he watched Saving Private Ryan because he said there was stuff in there that was so accurate. The bit when he gets out the tank and looks around taking it all in was apparently spot on.

I saw a very emotional made-for-video thing at school. It was about 4 hours long and about a Jewish family living in Germany just as Hitler was starting to tell folk what to do. Much better than any Hollywood thing I've ever seen.

Interestingly, my psychology teacher told me that had Hitler come to England the English would have followed him because (a) he was very good at persuading people and (b) it's human nature (and we proved this several times in tests we did) to follow the crowd even if you know it's wrong to, say, performing unnecessary operations or gassing people.

It may be spot on but sometimes I think films milk the situation and tend to forget it really happened.

Just look at Titanic. I only cried once in that film - when I realised that it happened to real people. I really didn't give a toss about Rose and Jack or the 'characters'/actors.

SPR is probably most accurate when Private Ryan was all "It's nice that you've come all this way to see me, but I'd rather not leave". My grandad said that he would have never gone home from WWII despite Japanese men flying planes at his head and seeing his best mates head blown off.

Maybe Spielberg can milk my grandad's life story...

i suppose it would be a very emotional film for anyone who has been in a war, but if spielberg was a good director then he'd be able to make someone who had never been near a war zone in their life cry.

i cried a couple of times at titanic, it was when the poor people were locked downstairs. and like you emmykins, it was because i knew it had happened to real people and i thought it was terrible.