Producer Rosie Alison isn’t one of those people though, telling Zavvi: “I’m an optimist like Paddington, so I always thought we would, but we had to take our time with it. Paul King wasn't around this time, as he’d gone off to make Wonka, so we needed to make sure we had the right director and right writers who could take over from him – we were never going to make this unless we felt we had those.”
King’s replacement has been found in the form of Dougal Wilson, a commercial and music video veteran – he has multiple John Lewis Christmas ads AND Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction video on his CV – making his directorial debut after years of producers attempting to persuade him.
“When I was first approached to make this, I didn’t really think it through”, he told Zavvi. “I approached a film like it was just a few commercials in a row – it wasn’t until I got deeper into it that I realised most commercials are less than a minute long, and this is an hour and 40 minutes long!
“It was an enormous step up, but luckily I was joining a team who had already made two Paddington movies. It was an enormous, intimidating challenge, but I was never alone.”
King and his regular co-writer Simon Farnaby maintain “story by” credits this time around, as Paddington (voiced once again by Ben Whishaw) and the Brown Family make the journey to Peru to visit his Aunt Lucy. But once they arrive at the Home for Retired Bears, run by Olivia Colman’s Reverend Monther, they discover she’s gone missing – and has left a trail of clues suggesting she’s disappeared into the Amazon Rainforest.
The former Paddington filmmaker told us last year that he believes Wilson is a far better director than him, and that the franchise is in far safer hands now. Both directors are naturally modest – you can see why they’re both perfect fits for Paddington – so it’s not a surprise that Wilson thinks that King’s statement is “not entirely true”.
“He needed to give me an awful lot of advice. I was already a big admirer of the first two films when I was approached, and Paddington 2 is pretty much near perfection with its genre, so I was terrified to be asked to make it – I was under no illusion of how high the bar I would have to climb would be.
“Paul gave me a lot of help, but I also had the first two films to guide me, which can be very intimidating when you watch them as many times as I have! The storytelling is so great, the characters are all wonderful, it’s just really beautiful – we really tried our hardest to live up to them, so my biggest hope is that we don’t let TOO many people down.”
The franchise is known for its scene-stealing A-list supporting cast, with Colman and Antonio Banderas (as explorer-turned-tour guide Hunter Cabot) perfect fits to a pantheon that’s so far included Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.
“The most fun we have with the films is thinking who would be an absolute joy to add to this world, and Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas together felt like such a fantastic combination”, producer King continued. “Antonio is such a wonderful, versatile comic actor, and Olivia has such an infectious gaiety.
“When we reached out to her to play the Reverend Mother, she wrote back and accepted immediately, telling us that she was going to be taking guitar lessons at once! She completely threw herself into the Julie Andrews, Sound Of Music reference of it all.
“She absolutely loved working with Julie Walters, and to see two national treasures who’ve never acted together before sharing scenes was a particular joy for me.”
Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin return as the Brown children Judy and Jonathan, and neither believed that a third Paddington would happen for years until they finally got the call. Enough time has passed that the actors are now in their twenties, experiencing what it’s like to be on a film set as adults for the first time; naturally, this was the “most fun” they’d had making one of the movies to date.
Joslin told Zavvi: “It was refreshing for us, because you work on the movie a different way. In the first two, we had chaperones and teachers with us constantly, and we’d be getting herded around from one room to the next – this time, we actually felt more freedom, so we could enjoy working with some incredible actors and a really talented director.”
The big change for the actors was that Sally Hawkins was no longer playing their mother, with Emily Mortimer stepping into the role (at the request of Hugh Bonneville, no less). For the pair, it was a “seamless transition”.
Harris said: “She fit right into the mold. She approached the whole thing with so much care and affection, not towards just Paddington as the character and to Mary, but to us – it seems completely seamless in the film, and she makes a really wonderful addition to the family.”
As for the kids themselves, as we’re reintroduced to the family, Judy is about to start university, and Jonathan isn’t that much further behind as he phases out of his lazy teenager era.
“I think both of our characters have grown up a lot”, Harris continued. “Judy’s going to university and is more career driven, but hasn’t lost her passions for journalism and photography – she's a driven person who is going to do everything she’s determined to.
“That’s how she ends up on this trip to Peru; for her, this adventure is her ticket to university, as a great inspiration for an essay!”
“In the second film, Jonathan was quite insecure because he didn't really know where he could fit in in secondary school”, Joslin continued. “He was trying to be cool, and then towards the end of the film, you see him embracing what he loves, and that's trains and Meccano sets, and he's able to be himself.
“In the third film, he uses this ingenuity to do what every teenager loves doing: absolutely nothing. But towards the end here, you see him really putting himself out there to put that ingenuity to use, and he finds that he is invaluable in sticky situations.”
It’s been widely reported that Queen Elizabeth will have a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo here, and she won’t be the only famous figure appearing from beyond the grave. Eagle eyed viewers should note that, when Paddington receives his UK passport in the post, the stamp on the envelope features the face of Michael Bond, author of the children’s books.
The idea originated from Wilson’s assistant Harry, who believed the author – who passed away in 2017, prior to the release of the second film – should have a “Hitchcockian cameo” here.
Wilson explained: “In the first Paddington, Michael Bond makes a cameo when Paddington and the Browns are heading through London in the rain in a taxi, and you see Michael Bond briefly raising his glass of wine from a nice bistro cafe. And we just wondered, how could we get Michael into this one? The answer was putting him on a lovely stamp!”
Without spoiling anything, the door is left open for more Paddington movies. But will there be more? And if there is, will there be another seven year wait?
“It’s impossible to say until we see how this goes when it’s out in the world”, King concluded. “But I think there was a sense that this film brings a full circle to Paddington’s story, there’s a lovely circularity to it that makes for a nice trilogy.
“Who knows what happens next? There’s definitely scope for more Paddington stories, but we want to see how the world embraces this one first.”
Paddington In Peru is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 8th November.
