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Licence to thrill: ‘Peaky Blinders’ creator Steven Knight hints bold Amazon‑backed Bond reinvention

17 May 2026 at 11:33

Malay Mail

CANNES, May 17 — Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, who is writing the next Bond movie, has strongly hinted that the ageing British spy is about to get really shaken and stirred.

The writers said that Amazon has given him a licence to play with the legendary MI6 secret agent created by author Ian Fleming.

“Bond has been bulletproof. People have been able to make mistakes and variations and the character has survived,” Knight told Screen magazine at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Because the core of it is like a diamond. You can’t touch it. The person you are talking about is folklore,” he added.

The writer told reporters that he has done research with “the SAS and even more secret outfits” for his reinvention of the next 007 movie, the first produced by Amazon.

He said he has met special forces and secret services personnel as part of his immersion in their world.

“I am talking to them about what they do every day. It’s all real,” he said of scenarios he is exploring.

New ‘Peaky Blinders’ series

Bond’s creator Fleming himself “was living that life in the war (World War II)” as an intelligence officer, he added.

“He was doing those things. He knew people doing that stuff, going out there and killing people.”

But Knight said his lips were sealed on what new turns Bond might take.

“I can’t say anything on the script,” he insisted to Screen.

Knight, who has just completed a documentary about Oasis’s record-breaking reunion tour, is in Cannes to drum up business for his Digbeth Loc studio in his native Birmingham, where Peaky Blinders is set and shot.

“We are filming the next series (of Peaky Blinders) at the moment, we will have it in the can in a few weeks,” he told industry site Deadline. “People are going to be pleasantly surprised how it has turned out, because it is so good.” — AFP

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  • Only 3 Movies Have Better Screenplays Than 'Casablanca' Diego Pineda Pacheco
    Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's was written prior to the United States' entry into World War II as a staunchly anti-Nazi and pro-French Resistance piece. After failing to find a Broadway producer, however, the duo sold the rights to the unproduced play to Warner Bros. The studio started developing the story as a film titled Casablanca. Nowadays, the name elicits nothing but respect among even the least seasoned of cinephiles. But back during the movie's prod
     

Only 3 Movies Have Better Screenplays Than 'Casablanca'

17 May 2026 at 10:22

Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's was written prior to the United States' entry into World War II as a staunchly anti-Nazi and pro-French Resistance piece. After failing to find a Broadway producer, however, the duo sold the rights to the unproduced play to Warner Bros. The studio started developing the story as a film titled Casablanca. Nowadays, the name elicits nothing but respect among even the least seasoned of cinephiles. But back during the movie's production, virtually everyone involved very famously believed that what they were making was just another run-of-the-mill wartime picture at best, and a B-level studio picture at worst. Instead, the film would end up winning three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Perhaps even more importantly, though, it has come to be remembered as one of the biggest Hollywood classics in the history of cinema. Casablanca is now praised as a landmark of the romance, war, and drama genres, proving just how remarkably close cinema can come to true perfection.

  • ✇Antiques and Vintage - flickr
  • L'envieuse (1911) Truus, Bob & Jan too!
    Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo: Vintage French collector's card. From our Album Pathé 1911. The names on the cards refer to the scriptwriters, not the directors (although they sometimes coincide). For L'envieuse (1911), the scriptwriter was Mévisto, but the director Albert Capellani. According to the Fondation Pathé, Capellani was co-writer of the script. Plot: André de Baudy (Adolphe Candé), an engineer at an industrial firm, earns an annual salary of 20,000 francs. His earning
     

L'envieuse (1911)

Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:

L'envieuse (1911)

Vintage French collector's card. From our Album Pathé 1911. The names on the cards refer to the scriptwriters, not the directors (although they sometimes coincide). For L'envieuse (1911), the scriptwriter was Mévisto, but the director Albert Capellani. According to the Fondation Pathé, Capellani was co-writer of the script.

Plot: André de Baudy (Adolphe Candé), an engineer at an industrial firm, earns an annual salary of 20,000 francs. His earnings are not enough to cover the expenses of his wife, Hélène (Léontine Massart), who, tempted by the luxury enjoyed by her wealthier friends, resents the simplicity of her wardrobe—no jewelry, no furs, no lace. One day, haunted by the desire to own a pearl necklace, she enters a jewelry store and has the shopkeeper show her various sets. But their prices far exceed her expectations. Was she to give up the jewel that had promised her so much joy? In a moment of madness, she slips one of the precious necklaces into her pocket and rushes out. The theft is soon discovered and the thief arrested. Her husband, upon learning of it, refuses to forgive her, and the unfortunate woman must serve her sentence: six months in prison. During her absence, their daughter, little Yvonne (Hacquard), falls seriously ill. Deprived of her mother’s tenderness and care, the child wastes away. The doctor hesitates to give a prognosis when the mother, finally released, returns to beg for forgiveness. André allows her to come and care for her child, and after overcoming the illness through long and devoted care, the guilty woman finally obtains his forgiveness.

The other actors were Maurice Luguet, Dupont-Morgan, Camille Steyaert, and Andrée Marly.

(Source: www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com/document/envieuse-l...)

Léontine Massart (1885-1980) was a French stage and screen actress of Belgian origin. She peaked in French silent film of the early 1910s.

Étienne Louis Charles Adolphe Candé, born 1 July 1858 in Paris and died 22 September 1931 in Épinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis, then Seine), was a French actor (sometimes credited as Candé).

  • ✇Antiques and Vintage - flickr
  • L'envieuse (1911) Truus, Bob & Jan too!
    Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo: Vintage French collector's card. From our Album Pathé 1911. The names on the cards refer to the scriptwriters, not the directors (although they sometimes coincide). For L'envieuse (1911), the scriptwriter was Mévisto, but the director was Albert Capellani. According to the Fondation Pathé, Capellani was co-writer of the script. Plot: André de Baudy (Adolphe Candé), an engineer at an industrial firm, earns an annual salary of 20,000 francs. His ear
     

L'envieuse (1911)

Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:

L'envieuse (1911)

Vintage French collector's card. From our Album Pathé 1911. The names on the cards refer to the scriptwriters, not the directors (although they sometimes coincide). For L'envieuse (1911), the scriptwriter was Mévisto, but the director was Albert Capellani. According to the Fondation Pathé, Capellani was co-writer of the script.

Plot: André de Baudy (Adolphe Candé), an engineer at an industrial firm, earns an annual salary of 20,000 francs. His earnings are not enough to cover the expenses of his wife, Hélène (Léontine Massart), who, tempted by the luxury enjoyed by her wealthier friends, resents the simplicity of her wardrobe—no jewellery, no furs, no lace. One day, haunted by the desire to own a pearl necklace, she enters a jewellery store and has the shopkeeper show her various sets. But their prices far exceed her expectations. Was she to give up the jewel that had promised her so much joy? In a moment of madness, she slips one of the precious necklaces into her pocket and rushes out. The theft is soon discovered and the thief arrested. Her husband, upon learning of it, refuses to forgive her, and the unfortunate woman must serve her sentence: six months in prison. During her absence, their daughter, little Yvonne (Hacquard), falls seriously ill. Deprived of her mother’s tenderness and care, the child wastes away. The doctor hesitates to give a prognosis when the mother, finally released, returns to beg for forgiveness. André allows her to come and care for her child, and after overcoming the illness through long and devoted care, the guilty woman finally obtains his forgiveness.

The other actors were Maurice Luguet, Dupont-Morgan, Camille Steyaert, and Andrée Marly.

(Source: www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com/document/envieuse-l...)

Léontine Massart (1885-1980) was a French stage and screen actress of Belgian origin. She peaked in the French silent film of the early 1910s.

Étienne Louis Charles Adolphe Candé, born 1 July 1858 in Paris and died 22 September 1931 in Épinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis, then Seine), was a French actor (sometimes credited as Candé).

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In the world of cinema, three has always been something of a magic number, and the only achievement greater than creating one masterpiece movie is creating three that work together to form a perfect trilogy. Across genres, from fantasy to sci-fi to crime, the best movie trilogies showcase cinematic storytelling at its finest, creating meticulously crafted arcs that follow narrative or spiritual connections between masterworks. And thrillers are no exception.

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Over the course of the 2020s so far, cinema has given us plenty of excellent characters. Well-written, performed by some of the biggest stars in the industry, and wildly effective at whatever the story of their films requires them to do, these characters will likely go down in history as some of the best and most iconic of 21st-century cinema. Only a few of them, however, will be able to transcend that kind of category.

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Sometimes the version of a film that audiences first see isn’t the one the director actually intended. Several factors, including studio interference and runtime constraints, can often shape a movie into something more digestible but less complete. The director’s cut, when it exists, is an attempt to reclaim that lost vision.

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8 Most Universally Acclaimed Sci-Fi Movies of All Time, Ranked

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There have been an overwhelming number of science fiction movies released throughout the course of cinema history, and so highlighting the best of the best is always going to be difficult. To emphasize this, here are some honorable mentions that have not made it onto the following ranking: The Matrix, all the Star Wars movies except for one, Arrival, Children of Men, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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