During its development, the adrenaline-fueled “Gangs of London” we know today almost took a very different turn. With three seasons under its belt and a respectable 84% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the action-packed crime drama stands out as one of TV’s most successful video game adaptations. But according to creator Gareth Evans, the gritty British underworld saga and crime drama was originally envisioned as a blockbuster film series.
“The project came to me initially as we got the rights to a video game and they wanted to make a film franchise of it,” Evans told Sky News. But the limited runtime didn’t sit right with the director, who felt a feature film format would shortchange the very essence of the setting. “One of the things I love about London is that you can step on to any street and hear 10, 15 different languages, all spoken at once,” he explained, calling it a “really unique” and “interesting characteristic of the city.”
Evans realized that a standard movie structure would end up sacrificing world-building for the sake of pacing. “I felt like if we were going to do a film franchise, we would have two-thirds of our running time focused purely on our central characters, and then only a third left to explore the side characters that populate that world,” he noted. Believing that a rushed trilogy format “wasn’t enough,” he worried the creative team would fail to accurately adapt and capture the series’ diversity.
Gareth Evans believed rushing wouldn’t have done Gangs of London justice
In order to better capture London’s multi-layered, multicultural gangster factions, Evans pushed back against the studio’s initial theatrical ambitions. “I pitched it back, saying this should be a TV show because you can afford to go off and detour for 10 to 15 minutes and spend time with other characters, and learn about them in more detail,” he told Sky News.
There’s also the possibility of stretching beyond the main narrative, perhaps turning the “Peaky Blinders”-esque TV show into a flagship with spin-offs that explore other cultures within the same universe. Evans revealed during an interview with Forbes, “It’s not something that I’ve contemplated, but there’s always the opportunity for spin-offs because the world is so big.” Evans also noted the importance of crossing genres versus making a straight-up drama with actions beats, adding, “We knew we wanted to thread thriller elements, a little bit of horror, and other genre elements.”
Due to Evans ultimately getting his way with the broader television format, both the game’s fans and television audiences got, not only just a worthy adaptation of its source material, but one of the best gangster TV shows of all time. A fourth season of “Gangs of London” is on the way, but no exact release date has been announced.
