Warning: contains spoilers for Luther season five, proceed with caution.

The news that Luther will be returning to our screens, but this time as an extended, film adaptation-type affair, is something that has been a cause of much excitement – and understandably so. The hit BBC drama, which ran for five seasons from 2010 to 2019, kept us all on the edge of our seats as we watched Elba as the titular DCI – and now we know when we’ll be reunited with our old friend.

That’s right: Netflix has finally revealed when the film, called Luther: The Fallen Sun, will be available to watch. According to the streaming platform, it will be available to watch in cinemas on 24 February before it is released on Netflix on 10 March. 

The latest two-minute trailer is just as gritty and atmospheric as we’d expect. Think a gloomy London background, heart-racing chases and plenty of shadowy figures skulking in the dark.

Watch it below:

Idris Elba will – obviously – lead the Netflix movie (in association with the Beeb, still) as Luther himself, and Widows star Cynthia Erivo is set to enter the London detective’s world alongside Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars actor Andy Serkis.

Last year, Netflix treated us to some exciting first-look images, as well as a description of the film’s plot.

The film is described as an “epic continuation” of the award-winning television show and follows a gruesome serial killer terrorising London while detective John Luther (Elba) 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,” the synopsis tells us. 

While Luther creator Neil Cross has written the adaptation, Jamie Payne (known for his work on Outlander, Doctor Who and Call The Midwife) has directed the film. Seriously exciting times.

Elba has previously dropped hints about taking Luther to the next level for years now and has told Entertainment Weekly in a previous interview that this stage of the story might be the perfect time. 

“I feel like John has to make some decision in jail,” he said. “It’s quite clear that it would be very difficult for him to be a policeman moving forward. I think that’s a great set-up for a movie. 

“The last few seasons have been more like mini-movies, and film allows us to now have more dramatic pinpoint moments that are slightly more compressed – and it’s a bigger but smaller dose of Luther.”

It’s not quite what we expected, seeing DCI John Luther trek across a snowy terrain instead of the dim and gritty streets of London, but we’ll take it. However, there is an explanation for the strange setting.

“We really peel the onion back here because we had the time and scale to do that,” Idris Elba told Empire. “It also gives Neil [Cross] a lot more, you know, Luther-land to play with, in terms of where Luther can go, how he goes, what the landscape is. We break out of the gritty streets of London; we take it outside of that a little bit. And that’s great. It feels like now we’re entering a different life of the Luther experience.”

And even with the bigger scale, Elba promises that the Luther film will stick firmly to the roots of the show.

“It’s really dangerous when expanding from television to film to throw a lot of money at it, and for that moment to change the characteristics of the show,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that even though we had a bigger budget, we didn’t distort the parameters of Luther-land too much.”

Images: Netflix