I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that's ahead of us [with Tom Hardey].

[The film Woman Walks Ahead] is from a long time ago. I wrote that ages ago. It looks gorgeous and Jessica [Chastain] is so good that I've got high hopes.

The story [of Allied ] itself is the story I wrote, and that's what's great about Bob [Zemeckis ]. You have meetings, but it's meetings for clarity, not to change what they're saying or doing. He takes what's on the page and executes it so brilliantly.

I think it creates so many more opportunities and pitfalls in that you are treading on fresh snow, so you're in a new place.

There's more to come. Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders] is coming soon. But I'm proud of making my hometown, which is considered to be completely unfashionable, slightly fashionable. People actually know where it is now.

[The Girl in the Spider's Web] can't be anything other than a sequel, but a couple of books have been skipped, so it is different, in that sense. It's really taking a very strong central character and thinking, how do you execute this? It's quite different.

The story of James Delaney is also someone who very deliberately presents himself as an individual and plays nations against each other, plays the East India against the Crown, all of those sort of overwhelming concepts that ran the world at the time.