'Downton' film mulled as show nears end

Published Aug 4, 2015

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With ‘Downton Abbey’ coming to an end, its executive producer is offering hope that a follow-up movie is at least a possibility.

By ending the TV drama several years shy of the 1929 stock market crash, producer Gareth Neame said rich territory is left to be mined if a film is made.

He told TV critics last week that it’s been discussed, but there’s no script or a firm plan. He later added that such a project could be made as a big-screen theatrical release but reaffirmed it was speculative at this point.

“I think a ‘Downton Abbey’ movie could be a wonderful thing,” he said.

But it’s time for the series itself to end while it’s still popular and acclaimed, Neame said. The Television Critics Association panel discussion was bittersweet as its stars and producers looked back at the drama’s past seasons and ahead to its conclusion.

 

Its sixth and final season will begin airing in September in the UK and in January on PBS in the United States.

The last season will bring back some faces from the past, but the focus of the final season is to wrap up story lines for the main cast.

The high-toned soap opera about the upstairs and downstairs occupants of a stately English mansion dealing with early 20th-century social change will end production August 15.

Studio scenes remain to be shot, but production at Highclere, the estate that stood in for Downton Abbey, wrapped recently.

“That was a sort of interesting day,” Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham, said of the final taping at Highclere. The cast and crew marked the occasion by taking a “team photo”.

Saying goodbye was difficult. “Laura (Carmichael) and I wondered around for the last time,” said Michelle Dockery, who played Mary Crawley.

“Suddenly we didn’t want to go home.”

 

 

AP

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