Idris Elba has said a Luther film could still be in the works – saying he is “this close” to making it.

The actor explained that there wasn’t “a real formal plan” for the future of the TV series “at the moment”, preparations for a film, first teased in 2018, are still on the horizon.

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“I’ve made it very clear that I’d like to see Luther come back as a film,” Elba said to Sky News. “And I can tell you this, that we are this close to making a film of Luther.”

News of a Luther film first came to light in 2018, when Elba said: “We are really advancing on getting a movie version up on the screen. Neil [Cross, Luther creator and writer] is beavering away on writing this thing, and I think the remit for the film is to scale it up.

He added: “It will be more murder, more Volvos, more frowning Luther… essentially we just want to try to take it to a much bigger audience and scale, and perhaps international as well.”

Last week, Idris Elba wrote an essay on the importance film and its impact on diversity. “Film isn’t elitist,” he wrote in the Times. “We all express ourselves through the stories we tell, what we watch and the communities we create.

“One person’s film culture is watching Spider-Man at the Rio, another’s is going to a Kurosawa season at the BFI or catching the new Christopher Nolan movie at an Imax. But it’s those smaller independent and community cinemas that have been hardest hit by the lockdown.”

He added: “We may need the money mainstream cinema from America brings in, but to create future stars and introduce new voices, independent film is where it’s at. I wouldn’t be here without it.”