Luther Creator Neil Cross reveals that the first victim is on Luther: The Fallen Sun had to be a woman. It’s quite common for a Luther project to include a lot of violence in the film. Violence aside, this series of films are known for kickstarting the movie with an opening kill of a man. Though Cross thought a female first victim would be better, he dropped the idea after Netflix wanted him to reconsider his plan.
Neil Cross shared the reason why he wanted a woman as the opening kill in the movie. He explained The independent,
“It has been said before that people are uncomfortable with the victimization of women in Luther – and with good reason. The strange thing is, if you were to count, there are far more male victims in Luther than there are females. But for reasons I’m afraid to question too deeply, the female victims resonate and scare more deeply. So there was a challenging part of me in the first draft of this, which was ‘. . . the victim becomes a woman, because that is more terrifying.’”
After expressing interest in making the first victim a woman, Netflix wanted him to rethink his decision. He said,
“And that’s the one time Netflix said, ‘Do you want to think about this for a second?’ And I did say, ‘Well, it will be less scary.’ I was afraid it might be like that, but actually they were right.’”
Andy Serkis as the villain in Luther: The Fallen Sun
One of the biggest challenges for Cross was coming up with bad guys for the movie. At first, the British novelist and screenwriter has no idea who to cast as Idris Elba’s villain. It wasn’t until the idea of bringing Andy Serkis on board as the film’s villain was born. Instead of casting someone who could be intimidating to Elba, they cast someone who gives off the vibe of being a psychopath. He said,
“The biggest problem with the bad guys is how do you find someone whose presence is a credible threat to Idris Elba? It’s not an easy thing to do, so I thought we had a really big uphill battle ahead of us. But in a meeting with Jamie [Payne, director] and Idris, I said, ‘Do we have a list of actors?’ and Idris said, “Oh, we gotta get Andy Serkis.” And that was that.”
Luther: The Fallen Sun is now on Netflix.