Downton Abbey is set to return for a third movie it seems.
Filming is set to begin in the coming months at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the real life stately home of the fictitious Crawley family, according to The Sun.
“There has been endless speculation about whether there would be a third movie and when it would be released, but finally devotees have had their prayers answered,” an unnamed insider told the publication.
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“The first two films proved such a success that a third one seemed inevitable, but the biggest problem was the logistics of bringing the cast back together as their diaries are all so packed.”
The TV show ran for six series across 2010 to 2015, with a number of special movie-length Christmas episodes along the way.
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After a four-year hiatus, fans had their prayers answered when the original cast all returned to bring a Downton Abbey adventure to the big screen in 2019.
This was followed by the sequel Downton Abbey: A New Era, which was released in 2022 – a project almost scuppered by the global pandemic.
“We’d all been locked down for months, so the fact that we were getting together to do the film was so exciting,” actress Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith, told 9Honey Celebrity when the movie was released.
In the second film the Crawley family travel to the south of France to uncover the mystery around a villa inherited by the Dowager Countess, played by Dame Maggie Smith.
Carmichael revealed “it was touch and go whether or not we were going to get to go” or whether they would use parts of the UK to double for the south of France.
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“The fact that we got to travel felt like such a luxury,” Carmichael told 9Honey Celebrity.
“Things were changing so much at the time, the week before we got the confirmation.”
The show’s longevity even surprised the most stoic members of the cast, like actor Jim Carter, who plays everyone’s favourite valet, Mr Carson.
“Nobody knew how successful the TV series would be,” he told 9Honey Celebrity previously.
“We were initially contracted for three series, then went on to six and we thought ‘that’s the logical end to that’ and then the desire for the film, led by the media and the fans, grew and grew and we did the film and that seems to have gone down very well.”
The third movie is expected to pick up where the sequel left off – set in the late 1920s – and be released worldwide at some point next year.