Here's Why Arthur Shelby Isn’t in the Upcoming ‘Peaky Blinders’ Movie

While Peaky Blinders' original series wrapped up its storyline in six seasons, fans of the Shelby family will still get to see more 1900s British crime drama. March 6, 2026, will see the limited theatrical release of the film The Immortal Man, which will then stream on Netflix on March 20 on Netflix. Following this, two new seasons chronicling the lives of a new generation of Shelbys, set after World War II in Birmingham, England.

But viewers still have a lot of questions regarding the events of Peaky Blinders' 36 mainstay episodes, like what happened to Arthur?

WARNING: the following contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders.

Audiences will remember Arthur (played by Paul Anderson) as the mercurial, older brother to Thomas (Cillian Murphy) in the series. After returning home following World War I, he was prone to fits of rage, and his behavioral issues were exacerbated by and contributed to his substance abuse.

Throughout the show, Arthur is seen snorting cocaine, drinking copious amounts of gin and whiskey, and taking laudanum, an opium-based substance widely used in the 1900s. While Thomas runs the Peaky Blinders outfit, Arthur operates as his second-in-command and is deeply involved in their organization's decisions from the top down.

When the Peaky Blinders went legit after Shelby Company Limited was founded, Arthur was made Vice President. He'd go on to become the business's head after Thomas Shelby went into politics and ended up becoming a member of Britain's Labour Party.

If you only watched until the show's fourth season, then the aforementioned bits of information regarding Arthur's evolution into a bona fide company man may seem puzzling. That's because Arthur appears to have died in Season 4.

In the same season, Adrien Brody is introduced as one of the series' main antagonists, Luis Changretta, who kills the younger Shelby sibling, John, in the season's opening episode. Later in this same story arc, Arthur is shown being strangled to death by one of Changretta's thugs during a boxing match.

However, Arthur only pretended to be killed, and the Shelby family orchestrated the whole thing, even staging a funeral to really hold up the ruse. This was all done to lure Changretta into a trap, where he was accosted by Arthur and shot in the head.

This maneuver helped the Shelbys get revenge on the man who killed one of their siblings. And while their retribution was enacted, Thomas worked to gather the American criminal outfits Changretta was beefing with to align with their enterprise, creating a 1-2 punch against Adrien Brody's character.

Peaky Blinders fans have noticed a glaring omission from promotional materials and sneak peeks of the upcoming 2026 film. In it, Thomas Shelby returns to a bombed-out Birmingham in the wake of WWII, with newer characters played by prominent actors appearing in the flick, like Barry Keoghan, who will be playing Duke Shelby, along with Stephen Graham and Tim Roth.

Noticeably absent from the film's IMDB page, however, is Paul Anderson's name. And fans online have expressed they aren't too happy to see Arthur Shelby won't be in the movie.

Some have attributed Anderson's absence from the series to his reported legal troubles involving substance abuse.