A ‘Downton Abbey’ Movie is Coming to Theaters Featuring the Original Cast

Ready to reunite with the Crawley family? Three years after coming to an end, the Emmy-winning drama series Downton Abbey is being resurrected for a feature. The original cast members are coming back to reprise their roles, and Oscar-winner Julian Fellowes, who created the series, wrote the movie’s screenplay. And this won’t just be a made-for-TV follow-up: this is a full-fledged theatrical event. Read more about the Downton Abbey movie below.

Focus Features is teaming up with Carnival Films for the Downton Abbey movie, which begins production later this summer. Brian Percival (The Book Thief, About a Girl), who directed the series’ pilot way back in 2010, is on board to direct the feature film. Expect lavish production design and high drama.

“When the television series drew to a close it was our dream to bring the millions of global fans a movie and now, after getting many stars aligned, we are shortly to go into production,” said producer Gareth Neame. “Julian’s script charms, thrills and entertains and in Brian Percival’s hands we aim to deliver everything that one would hope for as Downton comes to the big screen.”

The television series followed the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who worked for them at the turn of the 20th century in an Edwardian English country home. Over the course of its six seasons, the show earned 3 Golden Globe Awards, 15 Primetime Emmy Awards, a Special BAFTA award, and 69 Emmy nominations in total, making Downton Abbey the most nominated non-US television show in the history of the Emmys. Not only that, but it even scored a Guinness World Record for the highest critically rated TV show along the way.

It’s still unclear exactly in what year the film will take place, but the TV series began depicting events immediately after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 in its first season and finished in 1925 as the middle class began to rise in England and cracks began to form in the aristocracy.

The cast of the TV series was massive, but the main actors were Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Joanne Froggatt, Phyllis Logan, Lesley Nicol, Sophie McShera, Penelope Wilton, and Rob James-Collier.

“Since the series ended, fans of Downton have long been waiting for the Crawley family’s next chapter,” said Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski. “We’re thrilled to join this incredible group of filmmakers, actors and craftspeople, led by Julian Fellowes and Gareth Neame, in bringing back the world of Downton to the big screen.”

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