Black Country could be Hollywood film set, says Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight

The Streetly-born writer said he would have struggled to have made the hit television series without the Black Country Living Museum, and said it would also be the 'home' for the forthcoming film.

He said discovered some 'cathedral-like' filming locations in the Black Country during research for the Peaky Blinders movie, the filming of which would begin in nine days' time.

Mr Knight appeared alongside the new elected mayor for the West Midlands Richard Parker who delivered a progress update on his first four months in office.

Mr Parker said creative industries would play an important role in delivering growth across the West Midlands.

The pair briefed journalists outside the Minerva Works in Digbeth, which Mr Knight hopes will become the centre of a Salford-style media village.

Mr Knight said as well as his studios in Birmingham, he also planned to set office in Los Angeles with a view to marketing the West Midlands to Hollywood producers.

He said the BBC would be relocating its flagship cookery show Masterchef to new television studios in Digbeth, with plans for an hotel also included as part of the scheme.

Mr Knight said the creative arts could play a major role in rejuvenating the region's economy, with the Black Country playing an important role.

"I'm going to open up an office in Los Angeles where people from Hollywood can send someone to a physical place and look at what we’ve got to offer.

"What we need to offer people when they are looking for a place to shoot is an environment where they are welcome and where they will be helped.

"The film industry is bringing billions of pounds into this country. It is a sustainable industry as long as the place where it is getting what this industry does.

"It employs not just actors, tech, camera people – it's carpenters, electricians, drivers and security. There is a huge amount of employment.

"The television and film industry is not some arty-farty, peripheral thing, it is real, it's about real jobs."

He cited the Black Country Living Museum at Dudley, which was extensively used during the filming of Peaky Blinders as somewhere that could have great movie potential.

He said it would also play an important role in the Peaky Blinders film.

"I don't know what we would have done without the Black Country Living Museum for Peaky, it's been our home, we always think of that as our home, and it will be again for the movie," he said.

But Mr Knight said it would be up to people in the West Midlands to come up with the ideas, and not to wait for outsiders to suggest it.

"The Black Country could be a Hollywood film set, if someone writes that film," he said.

"Nothing's implausible or impossible, people have to have faith in the idea that what they experience in their back garden, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Tipton, why not?

"Why shouldn't that be the venue for a really compelling drama or comedy or whatever, and it's up to us to do it.

"You can't wait for people to come along and say we've written you a film, we have got to do it ourselves."

Mr Knight said he had discovered a number of exciting film location in the Black Country during recent research.

He said: "I went with the location people along the canals, and they went into the Black Country, and they found some places that are like cathedrals, I love the Black Country, I used to go there with my dad, you'd go into nail-making yards, horseshoe-making yards, it was amazing, I love the Black Country and the sense of humour is great."