Oscar winner Cillian Murphy "definitely" returning for Peaky Blinders movie, says creator

Many now know him as Death, Destroyer Of Worlds in the wake of his Best Actor Academy Award for Oppenheimer. But for a certain legion of fans, Cillian Murphy is better known as Tommy Shelby. For those acolytes, we have good news. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has confirmed Murphy is part of the cast for the spin-off film of the BBC/Netflix show, which followed the Shelby family’s criminal enterprise in Birmingham, England in the wake of World War I.

Knight has been teasing a Peaky movie since before the final season even aired, at one point even suggesting it would debut in 2023. Of course, that was before Oppenheimer became one of the biggest movies of that year, and the biggest movie of Murphy’s career, and the biggest biopic of all time. Basically, things have changed since the sixth season finale of Peaky Blinders. But “He definitely is returning for it,” Knight told BirminghamWorld at the premiere of his new series This Town. “We’re shooting it in September just down the road in Digbeth.”

According to BirminghamWorld, the film is set to take Peaky Blinders into the World War II era. Knight previously explained to Esquire that the “new generation” introduced in the sixth series “are going to be part of what happens” in the movie. “The film, I know exactly what it’s about. And I know what two stories it’s going to tell. How the story will unfold, I don’t know. What will happen after that, I want that to depend on the film. For all we know somebody is going to pop out—I think I know who it’s going to be.”

Another Peaky Blinders spin-off series has also been on Knight’s mind for a while, but the film seems likely to be the end of Tommy Shelby’s story, one way or another. Last month, the Irish Star reported that after being spotted meeting with Knight, Murphy proclaimed, “I have always said that if Knight delivers a script that I know he can deliver, because he is such a phenomenal writer, I’ll be there. If we want to watch 50-year-old Tommy Shelby, I will be there. Let’s do it.”

Well, it’s getting done! And as for his success outside Peaky, Knight has nothing but praise for his star. “It was so deserved,” he said to BirminghamWorld of Murphy’s Oppenheimer Oscar. “I mean he’s brilliant, and he’s such a great human being and he leads the line when we’re shooting and he’s so level headed and straight forward. He deserves everything he gets.”