Posted in: Netflix, TV | Tagged: andy serkis, bbc, idris elba, luther, netflix

Luther: The Fallen Sun: Idris Elba's "Bond" Returns This March

Arriving in March, Luther: The Fallen Sun, the movie spinoff of the BBC series, could be a "James Bond" franchise if Idris Elba gets his way.

Luther: The Fallen Sun, the new feature film spinoff of Idris Elba's long-running BBC series Luther, has a theatrical and streaming release date. It will get a limited theatrical run starting February 24th and will debut on Netflix on March 23rd.

As the official synopsis reads, "A gruesome serial killer is terrorising London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary."

"John almost feels like a superhero – he doesn't wear a cape, he wears a coat," Elba told Total Film, touting his ambition to turn the movie into a franchise on the scale of James Bond. "100 percent, it is a franchise. We're desperate to take Luther out of Luther-land, and put him in the big world," he said. "I think that's a really important characteristic of scale and growth in our films. I mean, can you just imagine John in Colombia or darkest Berlin, where it's really weird and underground? Luther could go to America if we want to do that. That, to me, is exciting. And taking the rules of Luther-land and transposing them to different environments is really exciting for us."

Luther: The Fallen Sun also sees Dermot Crowley reprise his role as Detective Superintendent Martin Schenk along with Cynthia Erivo and Andy Serkis as the baddie, a tech billionaire who uses surveillance technology to manipulate and kill civilians, as baddies played by Serkis tend to do. "John is a leading character in a film that he's the hero of. That's the comparison I'm making. Some films do them well – Bond is one of them. But my ambition for it is to have that sort of scale, that reverence. I want people to be like: 'Ooh! Luther, the first film? Wicked.' And to continue that. And then maybe later down the line, when I'm too old, someone else will step in to play John."

One day, Elba will step down, but Luther will never die. The character will probably regenerate into Will Smith's son or someone similar, just like Daniel Craig's Bond is currently at the bottom of the ocean regenerating into whoever the Broccolis decide to cast next.

Luther: The Fallen Sun streams on Netflix on March 23rd.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!