Focus FeaturesGet ready, Downton Abbey fans! Because a second movie is on the way!
Focus Features announced in a press release on April 19 that it has once again partnered with Carnival Films to produce Downton Abbey 2. Not only will the original principal cast return for the sequel but there will be some new faces, as well. According to the press release, Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye and Dominic West are all acting in the film. Creator Julian Fellowes will write the screenplay, as well as produce along with Gareth Neame and Liz Trubridge. Simon Curtis will direct.
So, when can viewers expect to see the movie? As it turns out, production already started last week, and the movie is set to be released in theaters on Dec. 22.
"After a very challenging year with so many of us separated from family and friends, it is a huge comfort to think that better times are ahead," Neame said in the release, "and that next Christmas we will be re-united with the much beloved characters of Downton Abbey."
The first Downton Abbey movie was released in September 2019. As moviegoers may recall, the film, set in 1927, focused on the Crawley family and their servants preparing for a visit from the king and queen of England. The movie starred Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Elizabeth McGovern, Imelda Staunton, Penelope Wilton and more.
The film followed the television series Downton Abbey, which ran from 2010 to 2015. Over the course of its six seasons, the PBS show received 69 Emmy nominations, winning 15 awards.
Shortly after the news broke, Bonneville, who plays Robert Crawley, tweeted, "Good to be back. #DowntonAbbey2." In fact, he'd hinted at the possibility of a sequel during an interview with The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show earlier this year.
"If everybody who is offered a vaccine takes a vaccine, we can make a movie," he said, per Entertainment Weekly. "We will make a movie. It's the usual thing, the planets are circling, they're beginning to get into alignment, but there's this thing called coronavirus knocking around. Until that is under control in a sensible way, we're not going to be able to get all those ducks in a row."
He then reportedly added that "there certainly is the intention to do it, we'd love to do it, we're desperate to do it," noting the film would be a "pleasurable release of a movie like the first one is that audiences would enjoy after all this mess we've been through."
(E! and Universal Filmed Entertainment Group are both part of the NBCUniversal family).