Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now playing in theaters, and star Cillian Murphy says that the long-gestating movie was designed to close the book on his time as Tommy Shelby.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ at a press event in London, the Oppenheimer Oscar winner shared his thoughts on his final outing as anti-hero Tommy Shelby, 13 years after first donning the famous flat cap. "We'd been talking about making a film for a long time," Murphy begins. "And then we were going to do series 7, and then the pandemic happened, and that put the kibosh on that. And then the film came into focus."
The challenge from the start, Murphy says, was always "to see if we could make something that would justify its existence and that would be the satisfying conclusion, and a satisfying final chapter on the whole TV show, and to try and make it in two hours as opposed to six."
Set in 1940, The Immortal Man picks up seven years after the events of season 6, and finds Tommy Shelby in self-imposed exile following a series of devastating losses. Back in Birmingham, the Peaky Blinders are now being led by Tommy's son, Duke (Barry Keoghan), who gets mixed up in a Nazi plot to flood the British economy with millions in forged currency.
It's a more introspective and reflective story for Shelby, who has outsmarted and outgunned the competition at every turn across the long-running show, which started life on the BBC, but has found a whole new global audience on Netflix. When asked whether he sees The Immortal Man as a closing of the book on his time as Tommy Shelby, Murphy responds in the affirmative.
"For me, for sure. I think Steven [Knight, creator] and the universe of Peaky Blinders can continue, you know, and I'm sure it will. But it's been a quarter of my life playing this character, and that's an awfully long time by anyone's standards. But a deeply satisfying one. I felt we managed to achieve something with the TV show and that each season became richer and deeper, and we never plateaued, which I think is a trick to pull off. And therefore, above all, I wanted it to be a present to the fans, like a return on their investment."
A two-season continuation has already been announced, which will pick up the story with the next generation of Peaky Blinders in 1953, but it seems unlikely that Murphy will be involved in front of the camera, given his comments. Creator Steven Knight, meanwhile, is typically busy – as well as the ongoing writer of Peaky Blinders, he's also currently writing the next Bond movie for Amazon MGM and director Denis Villeneuve.
"Steve Knight's one of the greatest writers in the world," adds Murphy, "And I have just been so lucky to have worked with him for such a long time and to have worked on a character like this for such a long time, and of course, you want to take it to its natural conclusion."
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is playing now in theaters, and releases on Netflix from 20 March. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies, or fill out your watchlist with our list of the best Netflix movies.
