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Sam Mendes has been making feature films since the early 1990s. He has a number of standout projects, including 1999’s American Beauty and 2008’s Revolutionary Road. He then stepped into the James Bond franchise, directing 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre.
More recently, he both wrote and directed the war film 1917, which premiered in 2019.
Speeding up to now, he has a new movie headed to the big screen, which he also wrote and directed, entitled Empire of Light, with Olivia Colman taking the lead.
Based in 1980s England, the story revolves around a “picturehouse,” which is an old-timey term for movie theater. In addition to Colman, you can look for Michael Ward, Toby Jones, and Colin Firth.
Jones portrays a film projector operator. In the newly released trailer, we hear him say, “Look around you. This whole place is for people who want to escape. People who don’t belong anywhere else.”
Colman and Ward portray coworkers at the cinema, Hilary and Stephen, who develop a romantic relationship:   

Firth’s character is still unknown. In the trailer, we see him in the movie theater, wearing a tuxedo, standing across from Hilary. Their eyes lock but neither are speaking. We do like the intrigue of the not knowing and look forward to the reveal.
Empire of Light is set to premiere on December 9.
In the meantime, if you’d like to watch Colman and Firth on-screen together, you can go back and revisit 2021’s Mothering Sunday:

There is a lot of emotion in their performances. Can you feel it coming off the screen?