The World Is Right As Paddington 3 Is Finally Happening

It’s the news we’ve been waiting for years to be announced, and it finally happened PADDINGTON 3 IS HAPPENING!!

Variety broke the story after a spokesperson for Studiocanal (the studio behind the successful movies) told the trade it’s in active development.

“We can confirm Studiocanal is working very hard on film 3 with the utmost craft and care – as with film 1 and 2.”

Not to overstate the importance, but fans have been waiting four years to hear this news, and by the reaction on Twitter last night, it’s the news we’ve needed for a while.

Excitement grew last week when Hugh Bonneville told BBC Radio 2’s The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show that there’s “forward momentum” and the project was “somewhere on the horizon.”

There are no details on the third film to share, the rep stated. Still, as previously revealed, writer-director Paul King won’t be returning to helm the third film as he’s busy at Warner Bros working on the Willy Wonka origin story, Wonka.

Which honestly sucks as I’m sure everyone would prefer to see King direct Paddington 3 instead of a Willy Wonka prequel. However, what is good news is King will be still be involved in the project.

Hopefully means he’ll be working on the story and script with Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby.

This leaves the directing chair empty, but there are some outstanding British directors. You can go high profile and bring in Edgar Wright, who would carry on these films’ beautiful style and bring his style to the franchise.

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Then you have Emerald Fennell, who is likely being one of the highest sort after directors in Hollywood due to her debut, Promising Young Woman receiving critical and award buzz.

On the other hand, producer David Heyman could look to bring in an upcoming like Stephen Merchant. Who is moving into directing features and did an excellent job on his debut, Fighting With My Family.

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Like King’s hire, Heyman could look into TV as some brilliant directors are waiting to get the chance to helm a feature. One that comes to mind is Kate Herron. She’s directed a couple of episodes of the Netflix show Sex Education and all six episodes of the Loki series for Disney+.

The fun part is who they bring in as the villain after Nicole Kidman’s wonderful performance in the first film. Then you have the scene-stealing performance of Hugh Grant in the sequel.

It was so terrific that it deserved a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and how could you not love this.

The first person who came to mind is Florence Pugh as a celebrity chef who steals Paddington’s marmalade recipe and makes millions. Meanwhile, two other choices are Emma Thompson and Olivia Coleman.

I always thought the third film would be centred around two political opponents using Paddington in the run-up to an election, and one of/ both women could play the MPs.

The only issue is they’d need to have both characters be similar because painting one as the pure evil will hurt the joy these movies bring and have Paddington show both sides what really matters, which is “If you’re kind and polite, the world will be right.”