It’s been a long two years of waiting since the final batch of episodes aired, but the long-promised standalone Peaky Blinders movie is now officially happening. And even better news for fans of the hit series: Cillian Murphy is set to both reprise his role as Tommy Shelby and produce the new film.
Creator Steven Knight confirmed a few months ago that, at last, a Peaky Blinders feature film which extends the story of the six-season BBC gangster drama is officially in the works. In fact, it starts shooting in September. And now, both its star and director are talking about the movie. “It seems like Tommy Shelby wasn’t finished with me,” Murphy said, in a statement released about the upcoming movie. “It is very gratifying to be recollaborating with Steven Knight and Tom Harper on the film version of Peaky Blinders. This is one for the fans.”
Adds Tom Harper, who’s directing the movie: “When I first directed Peaky Blinders over 10 years ago, we didn’t know what the series would become, but we did know that there was something in the alchemy of the cast and the writing that felt explosive. Peaky has always been a story about family — and so it’s incredibly exciting to be reuniting with Steve and Cillian to bring the movie to audiences across the world on Netflix.”
Knight’s statement, I must say, excites me the most. “It will be an explosive chapter in the Peaky Blinders story,” he says about what’s to come. “No holds barred. Full on Peaky Blinders at war.”
There’s no projected release date yet, but honestly this is welcome news indeed for fans who’ve been waiting to get a solid update about the rumored movie ever since the sixth and final season of the hit series debuted on Netflix back in 2022.
I assume the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired at some point in the intervening two years, so just by way of a reminder of where things left off — Tommy’s doctor, remember, had led him to believe that he has an incurable brain tumor. Eventually, though, Tommy finds out that the doctor who diagnosed him is friends with Tommy’s fascist enemy Oswald Mosley and that the diagnosis was simply a ruse to take him out of the picture.
Accordingly, Tommy has a sort of last supper with those closest to him, literally blows up his own mansion with dynamite, and heads out in a Gypsy wagon preparing to off himself. A vision from his daughter saves him and leads him to the truth, ultimately giving the Tommy who was never the same after he came back from war a chance at what he never really found throughout the series — redemption.
As for what a Peaky Blinders movie might entail, the show’s executive producer Caryn Mandabach has already teased what fans can look forward to on that front. “The decision was to make the movie separate from the TV series, because it’s pretty much clear what’s happening to everybody at the end of the thing,” she said in a Netflix promotional interview. “We’re hopeful to do a movie that will not be at the same time period. It won’t be 1938. We’re gonna skip a few years as we do every year.”
Still, it should go without saying that there’s a lot that this movie is going to need to live up to. How do you even start to sum up a Netflix series like Peaky Blinders? From Murphy’s performance-for-the-ages as the brooding gangster to his snarling yet loyal brother Arthur, the show was packed with iconic, mesmerizing characters. The same goes for the Peaky Blinders women like Polly, Ada, and Lizzie — all of them as tough as steel — as well as for Tom Hardy’s gonzo performance as Tommy’s wild and unruly frenemy Alfie Solomons.
I don’t know about you, but I think the news of the film means a big Peaky rewatch is in order for me soon.
