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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment

Tom Hardy teams up with Peaky Blinders producer on A Christmas Carol adaptation

New favourite: British actor Tom Hardy (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

Tom Hardy will star in an upcoming BBC adaptation of A Christmas Carol, as well as serving as executive producer alongside Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight.

Knight, who also worked with Hardy on Taboo, confirmed his involvement in the three-part show - but remained tight-lipped on who he would play.

He teased the adaptation would have an “American element” but refused to disclose the nature of the US-based twist.

Speaking to Collider he said: “It’s gonna be three one-hours, it’s largely done in terms of the script. We’re planning to shoot this year and hopefully get it on the screen for Christmas…

Teaming up: Steven Knight and Tom Hardy will produce A Christmas Carol - with Hardy in a starring role (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

“What I’m planning to do is adapt five Dickens books - A Christmas Carol plus four novels - and do it over a period of six or seven years and have a repertory of actors, and I think we’ll get the best actors in the world, hopefully, to take part because the Dickens characters are so great.”

Knight added that it would be “sort of like a Taboo way but not really”, staying silent on the unique spin they’d bring to the Christmas classic.

1984 adaptation: George C Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge in the festive film (Baxter Healthcare Ltd)

The project was originally announced back in 2017, with the pair promising to “reinvent Dickens’ most famous works”, with A Christmas Carol the first to be adapted.

At the time, Knight told the BBC: “Any question about narrative storytelling is answered by Dickens.

“To have the chance to revisit the text and interpret in a new way is the greatest privilege. We need luck and wisdom to do this justice.”

Meanwhile, the fifth series of Peaky Blinders has just finished filming, meaning fans should hope to see it back on the small screen sometime soon.

The gritty drama, starring Cillian Murphy and Helen McCrory, is set in Birmingham in the aftermath of World War I.

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