Empire’s World-Exclusive Mickey 17 Covers Revealed

With Parasite, Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho stormed into the Hollywood big-leagues – and he has no intention of leaving. Five years after winning Best Picture (and Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature  Film) for his slyly satirical capitalist thriller, Director Bong is back with his third English-language feature, Mickey 17, boasting an A-list lead in none other than Robert Pattinson. But make no mistake: this isn’t Bong going mainstream. Like Snowpiercer and Okja before it, Mickey 17 tilts the filmmaker head-first into bonkers sci-fi territory. It’s a madcap story of mass capitalism, marauding monsters, and multiple R-Pattzes. This is Director Bong writ large. Everybody, meet Mickey 17.

The new issue of Empire takes a world-exclusive dive into Mickey 17’s wild world, speaking to Bong himself – plus his stars Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, and Steven Yeun – about following up his Oscars mega-smash, the changes he’s made to Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 (including those extra 10 Mickeys), and how to make a cinematic sci-fi epic slathered in that one-of-a-kind ‘Bong sauce’. And it’s packed with never-before-seen images, giving you the best look yet at what’s in store from Bong’s big comeback. It’s a no-holds-barred first look at one of 2025’s most-anticipated films, from a filmmaker who never fails to surprise.

This month’s newsstand cover gives you two Robert Pattinsons for the price of one: with Mickey 17 standing alongside his more unpredictable reprinted ‘expendable’, Mickey 18.

And the subscriber cover goes reprint-crazy, dialling up the Mickeys in an illustration created exclusively for Empire by Supertotto.

And that’s not all! This month’s issue is packed with goodies – including an epic look at the future of cinema, quizzing Hollywood’s finest on what the rise of streaming, dawn of AI, and arrival of new filmmaking voices means for the medium; a gathering of the star-studded director roster of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew; a look at the future of the Lord Of The Rings saga on screen; a trip into Bene Gesserit history with Dune: Prophecy; a journey to the Pride Lands with Mufasa: The Lion King director Barry Jenkins; a career-spanning interview with Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo, and much, much more.

It’s an issue so jam-packed, you’ll want 17 reprints of yourself just to savour it all. Empire’s world-exclusive Mickey 17 issue hits newsstands on Thursday 24 October. Pre-order a copy online now. Mickey 17 comes to UK cinemas on 31 January.