Cillian Murphy Is Headmaster in Netflix's ‘Steve’

Despite the hype around Peaky Blinders — both the film and the recently announced Season 7 — star Cillian Murphy has thus far stayed faithful to making indie films and small offbeat awardsbait projects that are far more arthouse than Oppenheimer's commercial blockbuster. Naturally, having won an Academy Award, production studios are eager to capitalize on this side of his career, especially those still focused on being part of the Oscar conversation and willing to invest heavily to achieve it. Hence, Murphy's newest project, Steve, hailing from Netflix, who are happy to let him do whatever he wants alongside Peaky Blinders.

Steve is a bit of an odd duck of a film. A 1990s-era period piece set in a British boarding school, Steve is Max Porter’s reimagining of his own novel, Shy, which he himself adapted into a feature film. The plot intertwines the experiences of a professor, Steve, and a student, Shy, at a "last chance" reform school in the U.K. that's being threatened with closure. As you will note, the title change indicates a shift in focus, centering on the head teacher in the film instead of the student.

Murphy was initially announced as starring in Steve back in February 2024, with Jay Lycurgo (I May Destroy You) announced as the no-longer-titular student, Shy. Filming took place over the spring of 2024, with the production releasing an old-school Polaroid photo of Murphy and Lycurgo on set with Porter to mark the completion of filming.