Peaky Blinders: Everything you need to know as creator Steven Knight unveils ambitious Hollywood plans for Birmingham

After announcing filming for the Peaky Blinders movie will begin at the end of September, Mr Knight outlined plans for an ambitious creative village in Digbeth.

Mr Knight said the area had ‘beautiful’ Victorian buildings, which looked like ready-made film sets, and added he wanted to leave a legacy that saw Hollywood franchises choose Birmingham as the place to be.

What do the plans involve?

He wants a hotel to be built close by for actors and crew to be able to walk to and from sets in Digbeth.

He wants some affordable housing stock of developments nearby to be offered up to people working in the industry.

He is setting up an office in Los Angeles where producers can speak to people in the city about what it has to offer them.

He is filming his long-awaited Peaky Blinders movie at his Digbeth Loc Studios.

He said a number of productions are headed for the area, the BBC were bringing Masterchef to the city to film in the old Banana Warehouse.

In Digbeth, the Birmingham Film Academy is also being set up to offer skills and education and help people get into the industry – with £500,000 committed through his company Kudos Knight to pay for people from specific challenging areas in the city to attend.

Steven Knight’s hope for the city

He said: “Eight years ago, I thought it would be a great idea for there to be a film and television studio here in Birmingham before lots of regions were doing that.

“We’re now at the stage where we have made incredible progress to take a beautiful place like this – the beautiful Victorian architecture, the warehouses that are here, the canal system – and do with it something no other industry can do with it.

“When a film producer comes and sees this, it is gold dust to them. These big buildings here in plenty – it looks like a film production set.

“We are making the most of the fact we have been given this legacy by our wonderful Victorian predecessors.

“What we want to do is plant a new industry here and not plant it like a spaceship and put barbed wire around it. We want this to be part of the community.

“We’ve been very industrious and made sure we targeted all of the people we’re trying to bring here. My first target was the BBC who are the bedrock of television in Britain.

“BBC are bringing Masterchef to what was a beautiful but derelict warehouse called the Banana Warehouse and they’ve built two sets of production there. We’ve landed the BBC’s biggest franchise.

“In 10 days time, across the canal in a not-so-beautiful but effective warehouse, we will start filming the Peaky Blinders movie.

“I’m going to open up an office in Los Angeles where people from Hollywood can send someone to a physical place and look at what we’ve got to offer.

“What we need to offer people when they are looking for a place to shoot is an environment where they are welcome and where they will be helped.

“The film industry is bringing billions of pounds into this country. It is a sustainable industry as long as the place where it is getting what this industry does.

“It employs not just actors, tech, camera people – it’s carpenters, electricians, drivers and security. There is a huge amount of employment.

“In order for those people to choose our industry they need to know there is going to be a pipeline for production.

“To make the pipeline flow, we need to have a set-up in this city. Anyone who is going to film is going to look at Liverpool, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London especially. We’ve got to offer them something that’s better than what they have.

“We’ve got to be very ambitious. I passionately want to have a legacy here where in 30/40 years time this will be a place where Hollywood franchises will come.”

The Peaky Blinders TV series was shot mostly in Manchester and Liverpool as well as the Black Country Museum but Mr Knight said ‘amazing locations’ had been found in his home city.

He also filmed This Town in areas across Birmingham and the Black Country.