Barry Keoghan is carrying the flat cap now. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the long-anticipated film continuation of the BBC crime drama that ran from 2013 to 2022, drew 25.3 million views in its first three days on Netflix. It topped U.S. Netflix charts and ranked as the third-best Netflix release of 2026.
The numbers position Keoghan, the Irish actor known for Saltburn and The Banshees of Inisherin, as the franchise's new center of gravity. He plays Duke Shelby, the eldest son of Tommy Shelby and the character who steps into leadership of the Birmingham-based Peaky Blinders gang. The film's central generational transfer is its sharpest departure from the original series, which followed Cillian Murphy's Tommy across six seasons of post-World War I crime and politics.
Duke Shelby and the Next Generation
The film is set in Birmingham in 1940, six years after the original series finale, with the city now gripped by World War II. Tommy Shelby returns from exile, but the story's forward momentum belongs to the generation below him. Duke takes command of the Peaky Blinders operation, while Tommy's son Charles Shelby appears in the film as a soldier serving in North Africa. The wartime setting gives the script a built-in backdrop for that handover: the old order disrupted, the next in line forced to act.
Murphy, who has played Tommy Shelby for over a decade, described the film as the character's natural conclusion. "This is the natural conclusion for Tommy Shelby," Murphy said, per Geek Tyrant. That framing makes Keoghan's role more than a supporting turn. Duke is not a cameo or a passing-of-the-torch scene - he is the film's answer to where the franchise goes after Murphy exits.
The film earned a 91% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation platform, and significantly outperformed other Netflix titles released in the same window. Sources say, competing titles trailed well behind its weekly view count, with one major release posting figures roughly 35% lower. The film also moved beyond streaming: its soundtrack, featuring collaboration with Irish folk group Lankum, topped UK and Irish Shazam charts following the film's release.
Creator Steven Knight, who wrote and developed the original series, confirmed in a report by Screen Rant that a plot twist involving Tom Hardy's character Alfie Solomons, which would have revealed the gangster, had been a ghost was cut before production was complete. Hardy's Alfie still appears in the film, though the nature of that appearance has not been detailed in verified production materials.
The film's first-week total of 25.3 million global views, a figure reported consistently across multiple outlets, places it firmly among Netflix's strongest 2026 releases. For American audiences who grew up watching the Shelby family's rise on streaming, the shift to Keoghan's Duke signals a franchise reconfigured for its next chapter, one built around a younger, rawer protagonist in a world now at war.
Disclaimer: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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