The Crawley family and their various maids, butlers, cooks, drivers, wealthy relatives and other moneyed cronies are set to return to our screens next fall. Focus Features plans to release Downton Abbey 3 worldwide on September 12, 2025.
Currently in production in the UK, the film will once again be written by Downton creator Julian Fellowes, with Simon Curtis returning to direct after directing 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era.
Highclere Castle regulars Hugh Bonneville, Dominic West, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Robert James Collier, Joanne Froggatt, Allen Leech, Penelope Wilton, Lesley Nicol, Michael Fox, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Kevin Doyle, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sophie McShera, Douglas Reith and Dominic West (who played a silent film star in the second film) return for some inter-war upper-class fun.
New additions include Paul Giamatti, who reprises his role from the original TV series, as well as Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale and Artie Froshan. Focus also hints that other “fan favorites” will be involved.
Little is known about the story, but A New Era will end in the late 1920s with the sad death of Maggie Smith’s great Crawley matriarch, Lady Violet (also known as the Dowager Queen of Grantham), who passes the torch to her granddaughter, Dockery’s Lady Mary, to keep things moving downtown.
Like its predecessor and the hit TV series, Downton Abbey 3 is being produced by Gareth Neame, Fellowes and Liz Trubridge. The film will be produced by. The film was produced by Carnival Films and distributed by Focus Features and Universal Pictures International.