LONDON  –  Cillian Murphy has said it’s “wonderfully humbling” to see the passion for Peaky Blinders, as he reprises his long-running role as Tommy Shelby in a feature film. The Irish actor has returned to play the Birmingham gangster in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, 13 years after he first took on the part in the BBC TV series. “There wasn’t promotion at the beginning. The show came out, and then very slowly it became this phenomenon, and it was down to the fans,” he told BBC One’s Breakfast. “It’s a wonderfully humbling thing to know that these fans have such an investment in the characters. And I’ve always felt like this [movie] is a return on your investment.”

The Immortal Man comes four years after the sixth and final series of the TV show. In the intervening period, Murphy has won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for Oppenheimer.

New additions to the world of Peaky Blinders include Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan, who plays Shelby’s son Duke, plus Dune actress Rebecca Ferguson and Reservoir Dogs actor Tim Roth.

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight said the cast “couldn’t be better”.

“I think we have got the cream,” he told Breakfast’s Charlie Stayt. “When we approach pretty much anybody they say yes. That’s true of actors, music, everything, because Peaky has an effect.” The fans “have been so great, and they’ve been the source of an enormous amount of energy and confidence for us to go forward”, Knight said.

“We see how loyal they are, how passionate they are, the tattoos and all kinds of things that that have been going on spontaneously, not because of promotion or marketing.”

The film will be on the big screen for two weeks before it’s released on Netflix on 20 March, and Knight said he wanted it to have a cinema release partly to give those fans a chance to get together.

“What we wanted to do was to make a film that will be in theatres, so that people who are fans can watch the thing together, in person, and not just communicate virtually.”