For Luther creator Neil Cross, writing the new film Luther: The Fallen Sun was a surreal experience. “Here’s one of the most satisfying things about my job: one minute I’m alone at my desk drinking coffee by the gallon and amusing myself by typing stories,” Cross tells Tudum. “Next minute, or what seems like it, several hundred people wearing North Face jackets and beanie hats are gathered in freezing, late-night central London to do what’s required in order to turn that typing into a cinematic set piece.”

Cross is referring to —  🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐 — The Fallen Sun’s shoot-the-works Piccadilly Circus action spectacle, which sees diabolical killer David Robey (Andy Serkis) blackmail a number of his victims into committing mass suicide at the iconic London junction. “It was a very difficult sequence to film because there were so many moving parts,” the film’s star, Idris Elba, tells us. “There’s lots going on, lots of extras, lots of vehicles, crashes, people falling out the sky, you name it.” You can get an insider’s glimpse behind the scenes of the chaos in a new featurette.

The Cast of Luther: The Fallen Sun Break Down the Piccadilly Circus SequenceThe production filmed at the iconic location for 3 nights.

Shutting down the iconic — and very busy — location for three nights was a feat that Elba says he never could have imagined while filming the Luther series. “It was quite unlikely that for a television show we would be able to shut down Piccadilly Circus with that scale,” he says. “So it was really special.” But that didn’t mean the shoot was comfortable. “It was freezing, I’m just gonna tell you right now,” Elba laughs. “It was a really cold night, a really cold few nights actually. But you know, we usually shoot Luther in the winter. It’s just part of the aesthetic.”

Originally, the sequence was intended for a different London hub, Leicester Square. “I think Neil thought, ‘Well, OK, containing Leicester Square is ask enough, but at least it’s containable,’ ” director Jamie Payne says. “But I stood in Leicester Square, and I started to break down the sequence and realize that it just felt like we weren’t meeting all the potential of what the sequence could be. So I walked up the road to Piccadilly Circus and it felt right.” The larger area felt like a much more fitting playground for Serkis’ twisted villain. “Piccadilly Circus is like an amphitheater,” Payne says. “So if you were David Robey, you’d choose the greatest piece of theater at hand.”

Luther was granted a privilege that few other films have been able to take advantage of: three full nights in the chilly intersection. “You know, I think even An American Werewolf in London only had one night,” Payne tells us. “And we had three.”

By the time the production had taken over the London hub, things had come a long way from Cross’ first feverish keystrokes. “A film crew is like an invading army made up of specialist units, all these experts in about a million wildly disparate technical and creative fields,” Cross says. “I love being in the company of people who do jobs I don’t really understand at a level I could never hope to achieve, most of whom are too polite to tell me to go stand somewhere else because I’m getting in the way. It’s one of the aspects of filmmaking I like best.”

As for Elba, the destination made a perfect kind of sense considering that the film attempts to supersize the scale of the series in every way. “It’s as iconic as you can get,” he says of the location. “An iconic character like John Luther in Piccadilly Circus is sort of a match made in heaven.” 

Luther: The Fallen Sun hits Netflix on March 10.