Luther Film ‘This Close’ to Happening, Says Idris Elba

Idris Elba has stoked the fires of the Luther fandom once more by teasing the imminent announcement of a feature film for his obsessive BBC DCI.

“There isn’t a real formal plan for Luther at the moment,” Elba said during a Q&A Zoom event for his Sky series In The Long Run (via Sky News) but added “I’ve made it very clear that I’d like to see Luther come back as a film. And I can tell you this, that we are this close to making a film of Luther.”

The Thor and Star Trek Beyond actor has been chatting about the possibilities of expanding the world of Luther into a movie for some time. In December 2018, he told Metro that the wheels were definitely turning on a film project, thanks to series creator Neil Cross.

“We are really advancing on getting a movie version [of the show] up on the screen,” Elba noted at the time. “Neil is beavering away on writing this thing, and I think the remit for the film is to scale it up.”

“Luther has all the ingredients to echo those classic [neo-noir] films of the 90s like Seven and Along Came a Spider, and I think what we would like to do is use that blueprint to create Luther the film.”

Of a potential storyline for the film, Elba said “It will be more murder, more Volvos, more frowning Luther… essentially we just want to try to take it to a much bigger audience and scale, and perhaps international as well.”

“The trick is … it would have to be a city. The reason cities work is there are lots of shadows and so I think those cities that have that Gotham-esque vibe to them, and I think that is mainly Europe. A film version would transfer quite easily to cities in Europe but who knows – wherever there is crime Luther will go.”

Season 5 of Luther, which aired back in January 2019 on the Beeb, was constructed specifically to pave the way for the detective’s big screen arrival.

“[Season 5]’s very particular because I think it’s one of our last TV instalments – I shouldn’t say that as a matter of fact, but it was designed in the sense that Neil’s and my ambition is to take it to a larger screen,” he said (via Variety). “We paid attention to what we were writing in this show. If we are to make a movie, this show is essentially a segue to that.”