Rogue One and Fantastic Beasts dominate Empire Awards

Jason Korsner

With the Oscars already becoming a distant memory, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has taken the top prizes at the annual Empire Awards – a ceremony that the film magazine behind the event says “truly reflects the feelings” of fans.

Felicity Jones won one of Rogue One’s three Empire Awards

In a set of awards that more closely correspond to the annual box office charts, Empire readers chose Rogue One as their Best Film of the past year, with Gareth Edwards being honoured as the Best Director. Its star, Felicity Jones, was named the Best Actress.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ended the night with the most awards, four, but apart from Eddie Redmayne’s Best Actor prize, the rest were in the technical categories, for production design, costume and make-up & hair-styling.

Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake was named the Best British Film and its star Dave John’s won the prize for the Best Male Newcomer. Anya Taylor-Joy was Empire’s Best Female Newcomer, for her role in The Witch, which was named the Best Horror.

Other genre prizes saw the Best Thriller go to Jason Bourne, The Greasy Strangler took the Best Comedy honours and A Monster Calls was named the Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy, beating Rogue One to the title.

The comic-book adaptation Deadpool won the Best Screenplay award, Finding Dory was the Best Animated Feature, the Best Visual Effects honours went to Doctor Strange, while Damien Chazelle’s multi-Oscar-winning musical La La Land took the Best Soundtrack prize and there was nothing for Moonlight, which beat the odds to pip La La Land to the Best Picture Oscar – in line with Empire’s leaning towards commercial over critical success.

The Best Documentary award was handed to the Oasis film, Supersonic and Inner Workings was named the Best Short Film.

The 22nd annual Empire Awards also handed out three honorary titles during the ceremony at the Roundhouse in Camden; Luc Besson was given the Empire Inspiration award, Sir Patrick Stewart picked up the Legend Award, while the Empire Hero award went to Tom Hiddleston, the star of BBC1’s The Night Manager, which was named the Best TV Series.