Peaky Blinders movie starring Cillian Murphy given green light by Netflix

Entertainment

Fresh off his Oppenheimer Oscar win, Cillian Murphy is reprising his role as enigmatic gangster Tommy Shelby in a film version of Peaky Blinders.
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Tommy Shelby and the Birmingham boys are back.

It has been two years since the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders hit Netflix. Now, the award-winning show is being made into a movie.

“The last time we saw Tommy Shelby in the Season 6 finale, he was riding off on a white horse, intent on starting a new life,” a Netflix statement reads. The gangster’s next chapter is no more peaceful than the one before, according to series creator Steven Knight, who also penned the script for the film.

“It will be an explosive chapter in the Peaky Blinders story. No holds barred. Full on Peaky Blinders at war,” Knight says of the new film.

Production on the BBC co-produced film will start later this year. Netflix has not announced when it will be available on the platform.

The series is set in Birmingham, England in the 1920s and 1930s. Patriarch Tommy Shelby oversees the family business of crime, violence, and gambling. The Shelby gang are known as the Peaky Blinders, a real-life squad of racketeers that operated around Birmingham during the early 20th century, and wore peaked newsboy caps. Contrary to popular belief, there is no real-life Shelby family.

The series won Best Drama at the BAFTAs in 2018. Controversially, it never received an Emmy nomination, nor did Murphy for his work playing cold-blooded Shelby. Murphy received a Best Actor Oscar this year for the film Oppenheimer.

The 48-year-old Irishman says he is looking forward to collaborating with Peaky Blinders director Tom Harper and creator Knight on the new film.

“It seems like Tommy Shelby wasn’t finished with me…,” Cillian Murphy says about the film.

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