Because the end of a beloved television series doesn’t mean much anymore, Downton Abbey fans didn’t have to wait long before their favorite characters returned on the big screen. 2019’s film was a surprising hit with nearly $200M worldwide, winning over longtime viewers and newcomers to the Crawley clan such as myself. The pandemic delayed the sequel’s release until next year, but today the upstairs/downstairs lives on the posh Yorkshire estate are back in a new teaser trailer.
Downton Abbey: A New Era returns virtually the entire cast from the first movie including Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Matthew Goode, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter and Maggie Smith even though the fiery Dowager Countess Violet Crawley was revealed to be suffering from a terminal illness.
While details of the story have remained fairly secret, this footage does reveal that Violet’s “mysterious past” with a man is going to play a role because now she’s come into some prized land in the south of France.
Series creator Julian Fellowes is back to write the screenplay, because nobody knows these characters and this little slice of English history better. Simon Curtis takes over as director, replacing Michael Engler. Curtis is best known for his films My Week with Marilyn, Woman in Gold, and Goodbye Christopher Robin.
Downton Abbey: A New Era opens on March 18th 2022.
