Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy will star in and produce a new Netflix movie, Steve.
Per Deadline, Murphy will star in Steve, a new movie based on Max Porter’s 2023 novel Shy. Steve is directed by Tim Mielants, who recently collaborated with Murphy on Small Things Like These, which is premiering at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 15, 2024.
Murphy is also launching a new production company with Alan Moloney, Big Things Films, which will produce Steve. The movie is being released globally by Netflix, with production expected to begin this spring.
What is Steve about?
“Steve is a reimagining of Porter’s Shy and traces a pivotal 24 hours in the life of its eponymous character, a headteacher (Murphy) of a last-chance reform school who struggles to keep his students in line, while also grappling with his spiraling mental health,” Deadline’s description of the movie reads.
The screenplay for Steve was written by Porter.
“I just adore Max’s writing and the thing his writing does for me, which Claire Keegan’s writing does as well — and it’s something I’ve always chased down in writing — is something that has an actual visceral effect on you, an emotional effect,” Murphy said of Porter’s novel. “I remember reading Foster, Claire’s short story, I remember actually crying reading the book and having to put my hood up on the train to try to hide, I was so embarrassed. And then Shy was also that book. Max gave me that book in a proof edition before he finished it, and again it just broke my heart. They’re the sorts of things I love as a reader and as a performer, so I really wanted to do something with him.”
Murphy said it was Porter’s idea to change the main character, who is a student in the novel, into a headmaster. “Myself and Alan and Max got on a call and we started to turn it around in our heads and it seemed like we could make a film out of it,” he explained. “The same events happen, we’re just looking at them through a different lens.”
A release date for Steve has not yet been set.