Idris Elba Reveals Luther Movie is Now Filming

Teased for many years as being a possibility, Luther star Idris Elba has confirmed that he’s back on set and in wardrobe as production on the Luther movie has officially started. Previously nominated four times for a Primetime Emmy for playing the part of John Luther, Elba took to social media to reveal the news, posting a photo of a slate for the movie and a tease of him in costume on set. His caption on the images read: “Oi……I’m back!” As of this writing the tweet has over 42k likes online, indicating fans are eager to see more of Luther.

It was previously reported that Elba would be joined in the Luther movie by Andy Serkis (War for the Planet of the Apes, The Lord of the Rings) and Cynthia Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale, Genius: Aretha). The news of their casting revealed that the pair would serve as  “double threat” to Elba’s titular character, describing Erivo as playing a fellow detective who would become “Luther’s nemesis.” Serkis on the other hand was dubbed “the story’s criminal villain,” marking a return to evil doing for the actor who played the Marvel baddie Ulysses Klaw in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther.

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Produced in coordination with the BBC and Netflix, who arguably boosted the show’s popularity in the US as its primary streaming home for many years, the movie’s script is written by the show’s creator Neil Cross and directed by Jaime Payne. The director previously helmed the fifth series of the show, directing other tv shows like Outlander, The Alienist, and Quantico, along the way as well.

“Neil is beavering away writing this thing and I think the remit of the film is to scale it up I guess,” Elba previously told Metro back in 2018 (to give you an idea of how long the Luther movie has been talked about). “Luther has all the ingredients to echo those classic films of the ’90s like Seven and Along Came A Spider and I think what we’d like to attempt is use that as a blueprint to create it. It will be more murder, more Volvos, more frowning Luther. Essentially we just want to try and take it to a much bigger remit and scale and perhaps international as well.”

Series creator Neil Cross penned the script for the feature film which has Jamie Payne set to step behind the camera as a directyor.. 

No release plans have been confirmed for the Luther movie yet but with a late 2021 shooting start date, a 2022 premiere doesn’t seem that far off. All five seasons of the series are streaming on HBO Max right now but have previously appeared on Netflix, where they could return around the time the movie premieres.