Interview: Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight chats Star Wars and filming Great Expectations in Shrewsbury

As well as opening a brand new film studio in the heart of Birmingham and starting the process for a film academy which will increase the creative talent pool across the region, Steven has been working on and been asked to be part of a number of other projects.

These include being asked to be the screenwriter for a new Star Wars film, creating a new adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" and being asked to be a partner of the Birmingham Festival.

He is also busy turning parts of the region into riot zones as filming continues on This Town, depicting the days of Two Tone in Coventry and Birmingham in the late '70s and early '80s.

Steven, who was also co-director of the Opening Ceremony for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, said the Star Wars film was an exciting opportunity, although he couldn't say much at the present time.

He said: "It's exciting to be asked to be part of a Star Wars film and I know that a big announcement about the film will be made soon.

"I've enjoyed the films that have been made and I am looking forward to being part of it, but I can't say too much right now about it."

He was able to say more about Great Expectations, which saw filming take place in Shrewsbury last year and the first episode air on Sunday, March 26 on BBC One.

He said the town was a fantastic place to film in and represent as London and spoke warmly about the experience of filming there.

He said: "Shrewsbury is great for London in terms of the buildings as the building stock is fantastic and it was a great place to film, with good people, lots of permissions and a very welcoming place, so it was perfect for us.

"The series itself has had a great reception, simultaneously in both the US and the UK, and it's been a tremendous experience all around."

The one-year anniversary of the 2022 Commonwealth Games will bring back fond memories for Steven Knight, having helped to successfully launch the Games with a memorable Opening Ceremony.

Held across 10 days and nine evenings from Friday, July 28 to Sunday, August 6, Birmingham Festival 23 will welcome audiences, artists, local communities and volunteers, reflecting the diversity of the city, to come together to watch, listen, relax, dance and play.

Steven said: ‘I'm proud to be a Patron for Birmingham Festival 23 and proud that Birmingham City Council truly values culture.

"The Games are still very fresh in people's minds, it was such a joyful period in the city's history.

"And now, with a great team pulling out all the stops to make this year's events a celebration of the anniversary, people will again have something to look forward to that everyone can enjoy, and it's all free.

"I can't wait to see what the programme has in store."

A proud advocate of the West Midlands, the filmmaker is looking to build the future of TV and film in our region.

He was there to break ground on Digbeth Loc. Studios, the brand new film and TV production hub in the centre of Birmingham which will host the filming of the Peaky Blinders movie and Masterchef, among a host of other projects.

The 63-year-old, who was brought up in Walsall, also announced the opening of the Birmingham Film Academy, which is set to be a centre for teaching people the crafts and skills for making TV and films, following on from the success of the London Film Academy in Fulham in West London.

Digbeth Loc. will be the setting for the academy, which is being run as an accredited degree course by Birmingham University, and will offer the chance for on-the-job training on productions such as Peaky Blinders and This Town.

Steven said the idea was to build the film and TV industry in the region and have a place where local people can work on productions, while also studying between September and June each term.

He said: "It's going to be teaching people the crafts and skills needed to making TV and film and it will do a lot of the craft stuff, so you'll learn about the actual nuts and bolts of making things.

"We'll be working alongside Kudos, who are the production company I do a lot of work with, and the academy is going to educate 20 per cent of their intake for free for people from specific postcodes in Birmingham and the Black Country.

"Those will be from postcodes where there is a challenging environment and Kudos will pay their fees, so the idea from this is that we want to encourage people from the West Midlands to choose film and television as a career and help them with that."

Steven said that there were a lot of people from the region who worked in TV and films, but who had moved to Manchester and London to work, and said he wanted to encourage people to stay in the region to work.

He said: "The one reason they'll do that is if there is a pipeline of productions coming through, which there is, and it benefits us because we've got local people working on our productions.

"The thing about the film industry is that it requires a lot of different disciplines across the board, including technical, practical, artistic and creative, and all these things are going to be required for the productions we are currently running and have coming up."

Steven said the studio had several big productions coming its way, including two US streaming services, and said learning on the job would be a vital part of the academy as the first intake of students begin studies next year.

He said: "What's going to happen is that whatever is happening at Digbeth, we want people at the academy and at Birmingham University to be part of it and actually take part in the making.

"We want it to be for the Black Country and Birmingham and we want the students to be a big part of it."