Billboard Women in Music 2025
Focus Features today offered CinemaCon attendees an emotional look at the first trailer for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. This is the last in the trilogy of big screen continuations of the British TV drama phenomenon. It’s written by series creator Julian Fellowes and directed by Simon Curtis.
Plot details had previously been sparse, but the trailer shown today includes a title card that tells us “It’s time to say goodbye” before we see Hugh Bonneville’s Earl of Grantham patting the facade of the manor house on the Grantham Estate in what indeed appears to be a farewell.
Before that, we hear Jim Carter’s Mr. Carson saying, “Welcome to 1930.” There are images of the family at the races, of Dominic West’s Guy Dexter in London’s West End and Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary ascending steps while wearing a sumptuous red gown. A portrait of the late Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess is also lovingly framed.
The first two Downton movies grossed over $287M combined globally.
We learned in May that production was officially underway on the third with main cast members returning and a number of new additions to the feature franchise.
Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti is reprising his role from the TV series as Cora’s (Elizabeth McGovern) brother Harold Levinson. New to the movies are Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola and House of the Dragon’s Simon Russell Beale and Arty Froushan.
As well as McGovern, other returning key cast include Bonneville, 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, Paul Copley and Douglas Reith.
The film will pay homage to the “end of an era” with the loss of the Dowager Countess, which has taken on greater significance following the death of Oscar-winning actress Maggie Smith last September. Smith played Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, in all six seasons of the series and reprised the role in the two subsequent films, with her character dying in 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era.
The domestic theatrical release is set for September 12 this year — can we get a Venice launch?
