Great news for everybody except literally one grumpy critic who decided to file a four-years-late negative review of Paddington 2: The marmalade-slurping champion of kindness and decency is getting another big-screen go-round. Britain's Studiocanal officially announced Paddington 3 at Cannes today.
The company is being extremely tight-lipped about the film's plot or whether the core cast — including Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville as the bear's adoptive parents — will return, though given Ben Whishaw is currently voicing the character in a television series, odds are good that he'll be back.
Director Paul King — whose whimsical eye brought considerable verve to the original film and its sequel — will return as an executive producer, but not direct. He is currently working on Wonka with Timothée Chalumet.
2014's Paddington brought Michael Bond's beloved children's book about a kindhearted bear from darkest Peru to life, framing his voyage to London as a broader immigrant's tale and pitting him against a cartoonishly villainous Nicole Kidman.
The 2017 sequel — with a scene-stealing scuzzball turn by Hugh Grant as the film's disguise-obsessed antagonist — was an even bigger hit, famously scoring a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes until one critic decided to burst its bubble with a negative review earlier this year. It now stands at 99%, keeping good company with Casablanca and Up.
Paddington 3 is set to shoot in the second quarter of 2022. A release date was not included.
While Paddington dominated the announcement, Studiocanal's Cannes presentation included loads of announcements about its future slate, including confirmation that a sequel to Joe Cornish's Attack the Block is in the works, along with follow ups to the yet-to-be-released Netflix action yarn Gunpowder Milkshake and the Liam Neeson-starring Cold Pursuit (itself a remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance).
Studiocanal also announced an adaptation of David Fisher's War Magician starring Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Jurassic World's Colin Trevorrow; a new installment of the Evil Dead franchise already in production in New Zealand; and a multi-film adaptation of the Astrid Lindgren's beloved Pippi Longstockings books.