Empire of Light’s release date has been made public by Searchlight Pictures, which has stepped out of the shadows and into the light. On December 9, the film will open in cinemas, providing a ray of light amid the gloomiest month of the year. Starting back in February, the film signed on an all-star cast of award-winning actors including Olivia Colman from The Favourite, Micheal Ward from Blue Story, and Colin Firth from The King’s Speech. They include Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie and Hannah Onslow in the cast of the film. At this point, we know that Empire of Light will take place around the early 1980s, despite most of the story being kept under wraps.
Visitors will go on a voyage to a coastal town in England, where they will visit a lovely, vintage movie theatre from bygone eras. Relationships will be forged and passion will flourish within the walls of this iconic piece of architecture as the love of film connects its key characters. Filming was conducted in late winter and early spring on the Kent shoreline to give you an idea of what to expect. So, as spring approaches, we may expect beautiful pictures of cliffs rising out of the water, as well as plenty of wet days and cloudy skies. Mendes’ comeback to filmmaking will be marked by Empire of Light, his follow-up to the award-winning 1917, which premiered in 2019.
The WWI-themed picture was nominated for a whopping 10 Oscars in that year’s event and won three awards, including Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing. Mendes’ previous films, including American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and Spectre, have all received critical acclaim from the film industry’s elite. Mendes enlisted the services of award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, with whom he has worked on several previous projects (1917, Skyfall). In the wake of Empire of Light’s release, the two have already won a slew of accolades for their previous collaborations. Mendes has previously written with colleagues, but this will be his first time writing a script all by himself. His and Pippa Harris’ Neal Street Productions label will produce the film.
There are no doubt that Empire of Light will get a lot of attention in the following weeks and months.