Official Trailer For The ‘Peaky Blinders’ Movie Unveils The Return Of Gangster Tommy Shelby

Netflix has released the full official trailer for its upcoming Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man movie, which will hit theaters on March 6 and on its streaming platform on March 20.

Directed by Tom Harper, the man behind the acclaimed BBC series, and written by series creator Steven Knight, the film follows the return of gangster Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) in Birmingham, 1940, amidst the chaos of World War II as he is drawn out of self-imposed exile to face what is framed as his most destructive reckoning yet — with family, country, and his own legacy all on the line.

The all-new trailer for The Immortal Man showcases a much more transformed Shelby, looking more ghostly than ever, navigating the chaos of a world that’s in the midst of tearing itself apart.

“You live in a house haunted with ghosts of people who died because of you. You abandoned your kingdom. And you abandoned your son.” — Kaulo (Rebecca Ferguson)

Murphy’s return to the role has been anything but a straight line. In fact, it took almost a decade to even get to this point, with him and Knight reworking and revising the story until it felt like something worthwhile. The Academy Award-winning actor touched more on this subject in a recent interview with Deadline.

“It was pretty much from like 2019-2020 we’ve been talking about this and going through different versions of the script and working it and reworking and revising it,” he explained.

With Tommy seen in the trailer being haunted by his past, pulling himself out of his self-imposed purgatory to confront something more than his personal feelings, the film may end up providing a satisfying ending for fans than the season 6 finale, which solely left it up to the viewers to decide the gangster’s fate.

“For me personally, I really felt that the film needed to justify its existence because I love the ambiguity of the ending of season 6, where Tommy rode off into the sort of bucolic English hills, and it was, ‘What, where’s he gone? Will we ever see him again?’ I felt that was a satisfying ending, actually, for the TV show,” he said.

So, therefore, if you were to make a film, it really needed to match it and, in fact, kind of improve on it. The series is always so cinematic, but I felt like we had to open it up more.”

While Murphy’s reason for returning to the role appear much more clear, creator Stephen Knight provided an entirely different reason for wanting to bring the show back, one that included having it set during a major world war so that he could take the story to that next level.

“It’s during the Birmingham Blitz – every night the place was carpet-bombed, and nobody knew if they were going to survive,” he said. “My mum was around at the time and told me stories about what that was like, just obviously terrifying. And so I wanted to get that energy of the Second World War and throw our people into it, really into it.” Knight said.

Along with Murphy reprising his role as Tommy, the film features a star studded cast led by Sophie Rundle as Tommy’s sister Ada Thorne, Stephen Graham as Hayden Stagg, and Ned Dennehy Charlie Strong, plus Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan, Tim Roth, and Jay Lycurgo. 

Personally, while I am looking forward to a fulfilling conclusion to one of my all-time favorite series, I am somewhat unsure as to how they will bring the whole story, especially Tommy’s, to a satisfying end in a film that’s only 112 mins long. I guess we will all just have to wait and see how it all plays out.

One thing is for sure: Tommy’s past has caught up with him. “You live in a house haunted with ghosts of people who died because of you”

See the trailer for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man below, set to a beautiful new original song by Grian Chatten, titled “Puppet.”

Thomas Shelby is a changed man… at least for now.