I’m starting to wonder if every news story about a magazine redesign is nonsense: first Q’s rebranding as a download magazine didn’t happen, and now the new-look, repositioned-as-a-lifestyle-magazine version of Empire is basically Empire in a nicer layout.

To be fair, it’s gorgeous inside – the art bods have done a stunning job, there’s some great use of type throughout and some of the pages are good enough to frame – but the content hasn’t changed much. The section on screen legends has been beefed up a bit with quotes and statistics (it’s about Jack Nicholson this month), and there’s a new section that’s been lifted lock, stock and barrel from Word magazine where a writer sees a classic film they haven’t seen, and then writes about it. Other than that, it’s business as usual – although there’s a nice conflict between an in-depth look at The Chronicles of Riddick and the review, earlier in the same issue, that suggests it’s a turkey.