Plans for a Peaky Blinders musical are "actively happening"
An all-singing Tommy Shelby? Executive producer Caryn Mandabach says the project is “bumping along”
Peaky Blinders series four might have ended on a typically grisly note of death – but the idea of a musical version of the Brummie gangster caper is very much alive.
The plans are active according to the show’s executive producer Caryn Mandabach, with the drama's bosses still convinced that its visual spectacle and musical roots will work well on stage.
‘It’s going great, bumping along,” Mandabach told Deadline. ‘It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but we’re actively meeting about it and having a blast. You can only imagine those meetings are real fun.”
This week the BBC confirmed that the show would return for another six-episode run in 2019 - but it’s long been clear that the show's creators are full of other grand ambitions.
Creator Steven Knight has also expressed an idea in a Peaky Blinders movie, telling RadioTimes.com last year: “People don’t tend to do it but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We have always talked about it. We have always felt that in these days of the pot being stirred it would be an interesting thing to do. People say you don’t make the film until it is unpopular, but I don’t agree.”
Knight has consistently said that he will end the TV series when the “first air raid sriens” are heard in Birmingham – and the Shelbys have the recognition some people (though of course not everyone) may feel they deserve.
“I would love to get to the point where Tommy gets knighted and becomes Sir Tommy Shelby because of the good work he has done,” Knight told us. “And this is a well trodden path of gangsters.”
