Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has revealed that he knows how he wants the BBC series to end, Deadline reports.
Knight made the comments at BAFTA's 2014 Screenwriter Lectures, where he discussed his television and film scriptwriting work.
The writer said that he always has an end in mind when he begins writing and that he has already plotted the series finale of Peaky Blinders.
"I'm not joking: I've got an ending where [Cillian Murphy's character] is Sir Thomas Shelby, and it's the start of the Second World War," he said. "The first siren goes off and that's it. What I'm trying to do with the whole thing is look at someone from his background: Can he get out and escape?"
He added that he enjoys writing for television because it allows characters to be more complex and unsympathetic.
"You can make somebody bad for a long time, and people love it when they then do one good thing and it's almost like a triumph. Actors seem to enjoy it more," he said.
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Knight has also been working on the screenplay for World War Z 2 and he spoke about the Hollywood process for filmmaking, describing it as a business of "fog and mist".
"Basically they come to you and say they want you to write X, Y, or World War Z 2, and you know the deal, you know the parameters," he said. "Personally I have no problem with that; they're running a business making something out of fog and mist, and it's not solid.
"They want to know they're going to at least get their money back. The easiest way to do that is to make it similar to something that has already made money."
He also commented on the current prevalence of comic book movies, saying that Hollywood has found a formula that makes money and does not want to deviate.
"I think it's a bit like saying a painter does a painting everyone loves and it's 40% blue paint, so from now on you have to paint paintings that are 40% blue," he said. "That's the film industry at its most blunt, which is why it's constantly bats and spiders and superheroes."
Peaky Blinders returns to BBC Two on October 2 at 9pm.
US viewers can watch the first series on Netflix from today (September 30), with the second series arriving in November.
Watch a preview clip from the Series Two opener here:
Reporter & Sub-Editor, Digital Spy Susannah is a freelance writer and sub-editor, specialising in the entertainment industry. She graduated in 2014, with a BA in English and American Literature and Creative Writing, and an MA in Creative Producing. She’s been writing for Digital Spy ever since, after first getting involved through work experience, and has written hundreds of stories for the site on a range of topics, from The Sims to Doctor Who. Susannah has also written for Reveal Magazine. Her special interests are soaps (her Mastermind subject would be 2000s Coronation Street), Marvel and Star Wars. She can also quote far too many lines from Friends and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
