Paddington Bear has found a new writer to come up with its next big screen adventure, and it looks like it has secured a director as well.
Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated Armando Iannucci, the Scotsman best known for creating the hit satires Veep and The Thick of It, will turn his pen to London’s most beloved four-legged Peruvian expatriate and write the fourth installment in Studio Canal’s hit Paddington series, Variety has exclusively confirmed. Iannucci will also be co-written by his longtime colleague, Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated co-writer Simon Blackwell. Simon Blackwell was a key writer on both Veep and The Thick of It.
Meanwhile, Variety reports that Dougal Wilson, the award-winning commercial and music video director who made his feature debut with the third film, Paddington in Peru, is in talks to return.
Paddington 4 follows 2014’s Paddington, 2017’s Paddington 2, and 2024’s Paddington in Peru, which have collectively grossed more than $800 million at the worldwide box office. The first two films were directed by Paul King (he wrote the screenplay for the first one and he co-wrote the second with Simon Farnaby), with Wilson taking over as director for the third film (written by Mark Burton, John Foster, and James Lamont).
Rosie Allison (Paddington, Paddington 2, Paddington in Peru), who first came up with the idea to give Michael Bond’s Red Cap Bear the big-screen treatment combining live-action and VFX nearly 20 years ago, remains a producer at Hayday Films.
The fourth film in the Paddington series was officially announced earlier this year. At CinemaCon, Studiocanal CEO and Canal+ Chief Content Officer Anna Marsh revealed that a film is in development, but said little other than that it features a “world-renowned comedy writer.”
Iannucci has been recognized many times as a comedy writer, writing the script for the iconic TV character Alan Partridge’s The Day Today, most recently on HBO’s Avenue 5, and co-writing and directing the films In the Loop (nominated for a 2010 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) and The Death of Stalin. Blackwell, meanwhile, is also known for creating the dark British TV comedy The Breeders and the sitcom Buck, and helped co-write In the Loop, as well as co-writing Iannucci’s last feature film, The Personal History of David Copperfield, which starred Ben Whishaw, who voiced Paddington.
But playing Paddington Bear is a big leap from Charles Dickens film adaptations, TV sitcoms, and political satire, and it’s no picnic laden with marmalade sandwiches.
The perfect balance between the duffel-coated bear’s impeccably polite kindness and endearing clumsiness that gets him into trouble propelled the critically acclaimed Paddington 2 to the status of a cinematic masterpiece (at one point, it was the highest-rated film on Rotten Tomatoes).
At the release of Paddington in Peru, producer Allison told Variety that Wilson was chosen in part because he is a Paddington and embodies all of the bear’s positive values. There is no doubt that she saw the same qualities in Iannucci and Blackwell. If not, take a hard look at your surroundings.
