All of the original cast is returning, Julian Fellowes has written the script, and the director of the series’ first episode will direct:
Very happy to see this! One of my favorite shows ever.
Since we all know how much Julian Fellowes loves to recycle plot points, let me save you all $15.
First Act - Bates is accused of a murder he didn’t commit
Second Act- Anna is accused of a murder she didn’t commit
Third Act- Edith falls in love with an older man, the family disapproves, it ends in personal tragedy for Edith, the family doesn’t really care
Fourth Act- The Crawleys are about to lose the estate
Fifth Act- the estate has been saved!
Liberally interspersed with scenes of
-Scandals that should make the Crawleys social pariahs, yet don’t
-blackmail, blackmail, blackmail!
-Branson dithering about how he fits in
-Carson harrumphing
-mentions of poor Mr. Pamuk
and bingo, there’s your Downton Abbey: The Motion Picture.
Can’t wait. I miss that show.
I wonder how they’ll handle the switch to Thomas Barrow as head butler, and the retirement of Carson. Rob James-Collier, the actor who portrays Thomas, says he’s a bit concerned about being typecast as a “neurotic, dark, gay character”.
Would a lady’s maid be allowed to continue in her position if she has a child to raise?
I would imagine that, between the life lessons he learned from his near-death experience* and the fact that he doesn’t need to scheme anymore if he’s in charge :p, he will no longer be neurotic and dark, but still gay. Or his neurosis will be completely new, and he’ll echo Carson’s neuroses from having to keep everything running. :eek:
Like Bates with the forgery, I’m sure the movie will have Mr. Barrow** scheming again but for the good of the family. 
*or, more precisely, the support he received.
**Like Branson, he will be promoted to Mr. as butler. Or should be if they’re consistent.
I will watch.
Awesome 
I can’t wait.
Theatrical? Or on the BBC?
I’d like to see occasional reunions centering around significant historical events. WWII, ect.
Did you even click on the links? Theatrical.
It’s interesting Maggie Smith had protested the idea before by questioning how old the Dowager would be. While I don’t think they ever definitively stated it on the actual show, my understanding is script references note Violet as having been born in 1842, and Robert in 1866. So they’d both be 84 and 60, respectively, in 1926 when the show let off.
That even gives them room to “advance it” 3-4 years into the early 1930s if they want and both characters could still plausibly be alive.
So… when are tickets going to be available?
So there’s going to be a movie based on the Downton Abbey series which was based on the movie Gosford Park? okaaaayyyyy…
Could Thomas *finally *get some in the movie? He apparently had an active (& offscreen) sex life until that Duke they were trying to set Mary up with brook things off in the first series. As for Anna; the answer is no. Her being allowed to continue working after marriage is exceptional, her being allowed to work after having a baby (& being allowed to drop her baby off in the nursery like it was a daycare center :smack:) is implausible to the extreme. Anna doesn’t even need to work; Bate’s wages & rental income combined with living in a grace & favour cottage on a country estate is enough for them to have a very nice life.
Well, the way they left it in the last episode, they don’t expect Carson to fully retire. Robert (I think) talks about how Carson can still manage the big parties and keep an eye on things as an elder statesman (whatever that means in butlerworld).
So there’re some built-in, but low-hanging, tension opportunities there if that’s where they pick up from.
Downton Abbey wasn’t based on Gosford Park. They were both created by Julian Fellowes, and they center around the same topics of an English great house with servants and upstairs/downstairs and all that, but they have nothing story-wise to do with one another.
I hope, given the budget and attention a theatrical movie is going to get, that they’ll rise to the occasion and give Maggie Smith a great death scene as the Dowager Countess. As balance for that, maybe Edith will be pregnant, since Mary was pregnant at series end. Can’t imagine they won’t use the opportunity for a childbirth scene, preferably one that doesn’t end in tragedy. Hopefully Bertie won’t go for a drive shortly after Edith delivers.
With Ms. Bunting in the wind, Tom should be firmly hooked up with Ms. Edmonds, leaving the door open for a new character to loudly and crassly advocate for socialist values, to the Crawleys’ shock and consternation.
Maybe Anna would take over the nursery (I seem to remember one of the previous Nursemaids was a monster) that way she could have her own baby there as well, at least while the children were very small.
Of course not. Servants didn’t marry and stay in service, and any unmarried servant who found herself expecting would find herself sacked on the spot for immorality.
An aristocratic family also wouldn’t retain a servant they knew to be homosexual, but Downton Abbey blew past that inconvenient fact ages ago.