Peaky Blinders Creator Steven Knight added star power late into the first day of SXSW London 2026 on Monday, sharing the stage with British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
In case you’re wondering: No, they haven’t brought up the much-discussed future Peaky Blinders Star Tom Hardy MobLand After criticism of his behavior on the filming site!
Did Knight hint at what the new James Bond movie will look like? After all, he was hired last summer to write the script for director Denis Villeneuve, who will direct the upcoming 007 film for Amazon MGM Studios and producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman. He didn’t do that either.
But he backed political calls in the UK for global broadcasters to contribute to supporting the UK production sector, given the content they create in the country. Last year, a parliamentary committee recommended a 5% tax on UK subscriber revenues on foreign streaming companies, including Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+ and Disney+, to help fund the production of British dramas. Netflix rejected this, saying the goal should be to “incentivize investment and success rather than punish investment and success.”
“The problem for me is: they come here, they produce huge productions,” which is “great” for job creation in the British sector, Knight said. “But they keep all the profits. I just feel like there’s a conversation to be had. It’s not.” [a] tax. It’s a two-way street.
He suggested that streamers could “leave” a certain percentage of money in the country to help keep the production infrastructure and success alive and well. “If you were to come in and take advantage of what we have, maybe 1 percent or 2 percent financially is something left over that helps us sustain that,” Knight said. He did not specify whether this should be a percentage of revenues or profits.
Under the slogan “Our National Story,” he and Nandy on Monday discussed these and other topics in a session attended by a large number of people. Naturally, artificial intelligence was also part of the issues they mentioned.
“AI poses a threat to writers and others,” Knight said, urging that “humans must be better.” He explained: “I think the people responsible for a lot of this technical stuff have to understand that they are human beings too, and they have a responsibility to do the right thing, not to be proud of doing things that they think are possible but are wrong. They seem to be running away from any kind of moral judgement.”
