Director David Cronenberg told us that it was very much "dead", but the sequel to Eastern Promises is now finally, officially back on track.

Filming is set to commence on the long-awaited sequel this spring, and it's been billed as a direct follow-up to the original movie led by Viggo Mortensen, which was released in 2007.

In a post on casting site My Entertainment World, the title is listed as Body Cross, with shooting confirmed to begin in London this March.

Picking up where the first film left off, the synopsis for the sequel follows "the incompetent underboss Kirill thinking that he and his henchman driver Nikolai really have inherited the throne from his crime-lord father".

The twist? "Nikolai is actually a clandestine agent working undercover in Russia's federal security service."

Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight, who wrote the screenplay for Eastern Promises, admitted in an interview with IndieWire back in 2014 that he was desperately "trying" to get the sequel made.

"It's written and it works, so watch this space," he said.

Focus Features

Related: Peaky Blinders series 4 starts filming soon - and Tom Hardy will be back

Whether David Cronenberg will be back at the helm for a second innings is uncertain, but one thing Steven is sure of is the script's quality.

"I can say the script for the second one is much better that the first," he said. "Honestly it's one of the things I've written that I most like and it's driving me mad… so I've got to get it made."

Luckily for us, it looks like Steven's hard work has paid off.

Want up-to-the-minute entertainment and tech news? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io