The creator of Peaky Blinders takes on the world’s most famous spy.
Photo by Harald Krichel licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Steven Knight is writing the screenplay for Bond 26, currently in development under Amazon MGM. Here we look at the writer behind Peaky Blinders, what his body of work tells us about his approach, and why his instincts may be well suited to the material.
For a full breakdown of what’s confirmed so far, see the Bond 26 hub.
Born in Birmingham in 1959, Steven Knight spent the early part of his career in television — including co-creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? What came next was a surprise to anyone who had only been paying attention to the quiz show. Four decades in, he has built a body of work defined by men who exist outside the boundaries of conventional society — shaped by violence, loyalty and a private moral code that rarely maps onto the official version.
His first produced screenplay, Dirty Pretty Things (2002), directed by Stephen Frears, earned him an Oscar nomination and announced a writer with a sharp instinct for the human cost of hidden worlds. Eastern Promises (2007), written for David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, confirmed it. Both films deal with violence as something systemic and consequential. The overlap with Bond is obvious, even if neither film resembles a Bond film in any other respect.
Confirmed facts, structured analysis, and reasoned forecasting.
Then came Peaky Blinders. The BBC series, which Knight created, wrote and produced across six series, built one of British television’s most distinctive characters in Thomas Shelby — a man defined by conflict, damaged by war and operating according to rules that belong entirely to him. It ran from 2013 to 2022 and made Cillian Murphy a global name. A feature film follow-up, also written by Knight, is in UK cinemas now and arrives on Netflix on 20th March.
His television record beyond Peaky Blinders is substantial. Taboo, SAS Rogue Heroes, The Veil, A Thousand Blows. The through-line is always men under pressure in morally compromised worlds. Knight does not write clean heroes. He writes people who do what is necessary and live with what that costs.
As a director, his most revealing credit is Locke (2013) — a single-location film starring Tom Hardy, set entirely inside a car on a motorway at night. It is an exercise in stripping drama down to its bare essentials: one man, a series of phone calls, and the consequences of a single decision. For a writer about to take on one of cinema’s most elaborate franchises, it is a revealing calling card. Knight can generate genuine tension from character alone, something best Bond films have always understood.
What he brings to Bond
Knight landed the Bond 26 job after a meeting with Denis Villeneuve, with the green light only coming after both men were satisfied with the direction of the story. He’s not a writer hired to execute someone else’s vision, but a genuine collaboration between two filmmakers who needed to agree before either would commit.
What Knight has said publicly about his approach is instructive. He has been mining the original Ian Fleming novels for inspiration, drawn to what he describes as Fleming’s tangibly real yet dreamlike quality, and his dialogue. That is a significant signal. The novels are harder, and more psychologically interesting than most of the films have allowed. A writer going back to Fleming rather than to the recent film canon is a writer thinking about who Bond actually is, not just what Bond does.
Knight has also compared Bond to folklore figures like Robin Hood and King Arthur, describing him as a character of folklore who must be treated with respect. That is an unusual frame, but not a wrong one. Bond has long since outgrown the novels and the films and become a cultural fixture, a national myth in a dinner jacket. A writer who understands that is less likely to get tangled up in continuity and more likely to ask what this character means.
His own work supports that instinct. Knight’s previous writing has consistently centred on men shaped by conflict and driven by duty or damage. Bond fits that template precisely, and in Knight’s hands, that damage tends to be examined rather than decorated.
The broader picture
Knight arrives at Bond 26 as one of the most respected British screenwriters working, with a body of work that has earned him a CBE and a place in a very short list of writers who can credibly claim to have shaped British television. He is not a safe, anonymous choice, but voice that is going to be audible in whatever script he delivers.
The question is whether that voice and Villeneuve’s find the same register. On the evidence, the overlap is considerable. Both are drawn to men operating under pressure in systems that do not reward honesty. Both understand silence as a dramatic tool. Both have spent their careers asking what violence actually costs the people who use it.
Bond has always needed a strong writer. It has not always had one. That may be about to change.
Bond 26 team
This is just one part of what’s happening around Bond 26. The full picture, and what it really means, is here:
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