THE brains behind smash hit show Peaky Blinders has been signed up to write the next James Bond film – and he is promising to make it “better, stronger and bolder”.
Diehard fans of the suave spy had feared Bond would lose its identity after Amazon bought the franchise for $1billion in February.
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But with 65-year-old Brummie Steven Knight at the helm, 007 expert Matthew Field says it is proof its British heritage will be preserved.
He told The Sun: “Amazon could easily have hired an A-list US writer but they chose Knight, a truly great British writer, who understands Bond’s importance.
“He has a solid pedigree in film and TV that spans more than 25 years so it will be really exciting to see his world of Bond for a whole new generation of fans.”
It is a job that Steven, who also wrote SAS: Rogue Heroes and co-created Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, says was always on his bucket list.
Mega signing
The youngest of seven children, he was raised by dad George, a blacksmith, and mum Ida, a bookie’s runner.
He has spoken about how gangster series Peaky Blinders, set in 1920s Small Heath, near Solihull in his home city, was inspired by tales of his dad’s gangster uncles and his mum’s work.
The BBC drama ran for six series from 2013 to 2022, helping to attract record numbers of tourists to England’s second city.
The final outing became the BBC iPlayer’s most streamed series of the year and the show is credited with seeing a resurgence in popularity for the names Arthur and Aida.
Soldiers in Ukraine have even adopted the name Peaky Blinders for one of their military units.
Married dad-of-seven Steven is a mega signing for Bond alongside Dune director Denis Villeneuve and producers David Heyman and Amy Pascal, known for the Harry Potter and Spider-Man films respectively.
Matthew says: “It’s a great collection of creative minds reinventing Bond. It’s in really safe hands.”
Before screenwriting, Steven trained as a blacksmith but admitted: “I was useless at it.”
After studying English at university, he wrote radio commercials, jingles and promotional game concepts for Capital FM under then-breakfast host Chris Tarrant in the Nineties.
One game he developed was Cash Mountain, where players would be able to win an unlimited amount of money answering infinite, increasingly impossible questions until they got one wrong.
However, he said: “No one would insure that just in case, so we had to think of a limit, so we thought, well, a million, why not?”
That concept became Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which peaked at 19.2million viewers per episode and was adapted for around 100 countries. The success of the game show freed Steven to write what he wanted.
When the 2022 Commonwealth Games came to Birmingham, he was an obvious choice to co-direct the opening ceremony.
The industrial revolution-inspired show featured Sir Lenny Henry, UB40, Duran Duran, Ozzy Osbourne and a 33ft mechanical bull.
Two years earlier, he received a CBE for services to drama and the community in Birmingham.
He said he planned to celebrate “Tommy Shelby-style” in reference to the main Peaky Blinders character and his love of whisky and cigarettes.
Now the creative force behind Bond, he told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I’m hoping that, being a Bond fan for so many years, it’ll be imbued into me and I’ll be able to produce something that’s the same but different, and better, stronger and bolder.”
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