Downton Abbey: New Movie Talk Following 10 Emmy Nominations for Final Season

Fans of the Downton Abbey TV show on PBS and ITV would love a sequel movie. Creator and writer Julian Fellowes and EP Gareth Neame are inclined to make one and are constantly asked about it by the entertainment press. Since the drama’s sixth and final season has just been nominated for 10 Emmys, the two are back in the hot seat.

Fellowes and Neame talk about a follow-up feature to the drama starring Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt, Rob James-Collier, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGoverny, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol, and Maggie Smith.

Deadline reports:

Executive Producer Gareth Neame and creator/writer Julian Fellowes said a feature film was still on the cards. “We’ve said we want to do the movie,” Neame notes. “But it’s a complicated thing to put together because the cast are all off doing other things. It’s not a straightforward leap from one thing to the next.”

Fellowes, who single-handedly wrote every single episode of the show throughout its run, revealed he had plenty of ideas for where Downton might go on its transition to the big screen. “I don’t want to be caught out if suddenly everyone says, ‘Yes, it’s go!’” he laughs. “I don’t want to be stuck. But more than that I can’t really say.”

“Julian and I are enthusiastic to do it,” adds Neame. “And so are the cast, I believe, so hopefully it will happen. There are just no guarantees at the moment.”

[…]

[Fellowes says] “But even if there is a film, I don’t think that really alters [the happy ending of the Downton Abbey TV series finale], because the rhythm of television is very different from a film. The weekly relationship you have with this medium is quite unique to television. And on a whole the endings this year were happy. Not entirely; I don’t think Carson’s was entirely happy. And there were some others with question marks over them. But I think the whole nation would agree it was time to make Edith happy.”

Don’t expect a Downton Abbey film too soon. Fellowes is working on a Trollope adaptation, the Doctor Thorne TV series for Amazon. Per Deadline, he also is adapting HG Wells’ Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul as a musical, entitled Half A Sixpence, as well as a Wind in the Willows stage musical.

Fellowes tells Deadline, “Once my whole desk is completely clear and bare and shining, I will then begin The Gilded Age,” his upcoming NBC drama about upper class New Yorkers in the 1800s.

The sixth and final season of the Downton Abbey TV series was nominated for Emmys in the following categories: