The period drama returns to cinemas with second movie Downton Abbey: A New Era on March 18. Now Fellowes says the latest big screen spin-off from the TV show, which ended in 2015, is not guaranteed to be the last installment. The writer, 72, said: “We were lucky to reassemble our cast. I think for them it’s become a sort of club. They say goodbye, everyone cries and two years later, we’re back at it!”
He added in the Radio Times: “I think each time it’s goodbye, but whether it is or not, who knows?” The first Downton film from 2019 took more than £110million at the global box office in a month.
Shooting on A New Era started at Hampshire’s Highclere Castle in April last year and was originally due for release last month before the pandemic caused delays. The timeline of the original series started just after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and the new film is set nearly two decades later.
Hugh Bonneville, 58, Elizabeth McGovern, 60, Maggie Smith, 87, Michelle Dockery, 40, and Imelda Staunton, 66, all return as the cast of earls, ladies, dowagers and servants in the second movie. Joining them are Hugh Dancy, 46, Nathalie Baye, 73, Dominic West, 52, and Laura Haddock, 36, as brand new characters.
The award-winning TV show followed the trials and tribulations of the aristocratic Crawley family at the English country pile of the title. Fellowes’ new period drama The Gilded Age begins on US channel HBO Max later this month. The full interview is published in Radio Times which is available now.
