Steve has just started airing in select cinemas after its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
Produced by Cillian Murphy’s production company, Big Things Films, it stars the Irish actor as the title character.
When the star first read the story, he told Deadline: “It just broke my heart. They’re the sorts of things I love as a reader and as a performer.”
The film also stars Tracey Ullman as Amanda and Jay Lycurgo as Shy, who Netflix’s Tudum describes as “a troubled teen caught between his past and what lies ahead as he tries to reconcile his inner fragility with his impulse for self-destruction and violence”.
Here is all you need to know about whether the film was inspired by a true story.
Is Steve based on a true story?
Set in the mid-90s, Steve is a reimagining of Max Porter’s Sunday Times bestselling book, Shy.
The film follows head teacher Steve and his students at a last-chance reform school and while Steve fights to prevent its impending closure, he grapples with his own mental health.
Author Porter shared the inspiration behind the story and although it is not based on a specific true event, it draws on very real themes.
“It is a book about 1995, that works as a book about now, I hope,” Porter told Esquire. “I wrote it from a position of absolute horror at the political present.”
“Anybody reading this book now, who is awake, will see what the consequences of a place like Last Chance closing is.
“When you close youth clubs and social support systems in inner cities, what happens when you strip the welfare state of funding? These things are obvious and terrifying. Where are we? Where are we going?”
While bringing Steve to life for the screen, actor Murphy spoke to Deadline about developing the character with author Max.
He admitted: “I gotta say, it was one of the most kind of exposing and terrifying characters I’ve ever played, because it was written bespoke for me by Max, but also had, I think, quite a lot of him in there.
“There’s elements that I feel like, you know, there was no accent. Max knows me so well at this stage, he would kind of write for the way I go on and talk. So, it was quite terrifying, because there’s no real prep needed.”
Steve airs in select cinemas on September 19, ahead of its Netflix release on October 3.