How ‘Paddington in Peru’ Harnessed the Power of Queen Elizabeth II, a First-Time Director and Olivia Colman for the Beloved Bear’s Big-Screen Comeback

In a cinematic first, both Queen Elizabeth II from “The Crown” and the real Queen Elizabeth feature in “Paddington in Peru.”

Olivia Colman’s all-singing, guitar-wielding and “The Sound of Music”-inspired nun — who runs a “home for retired bears” — is one of the noisier (and wildly entertaining) new additions to the franchise. But the late monarch’s appearance is a little more subtle — a brief glimpse of a photo showing her having afternoon tea with Paddington taken from a short video that was made as part of her 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Blink-and-you-miss-it maybe, but it’ll likely stir up a few emotions.

For many, Her Majesty pulling a marmalade sandwich out of her handbag in the Jubilee sketch (“I keep mine in here — for later,” she says after Paddington offers her one from under his hat) was their last image of the Queen. When she passed away just a few months later, among the flowers and cards left across the U.K. in tribute were hundreds of Paddington Bear dolls and marmalade sandwiches. It got so bad that people were eventually asked to stop bringing the sandwiches because of the “negative impact” they were having on the wildlife.

However fleeting, this very special moment in the long-awaited third Paddington film needed approval from Buckingham Palace. It came “with the consent and agreement of the royal household,” assures Ron Halpern, head of global productions at France’s Studiocanal, which fully financed “Paddington in Peru” and is releasing it in the U.K. on Nov 8. (Columbia Pictures will release it in the U.S. on Jan. 17.)  

“[The royal family] were actually very happy for it to happen,” claims producer Rosie Alison. “But we don’t like to make a big deal of it, because Paddington’s obviously a very modest fellow.”

That’s not the only VIP treatment “Paddington in Peru” received. As the title suggests, where the previous films in the live-action/CGI “Paddington” franchise — both from writer-director Paul King — followed the gentle-natured and naïvely curious bear as he settled in London with his adoptive family the Browns, in the threequel he’s heading back to his homeland (where, alongside Colman he meets fellow newbie Antonio Banderas).

And for that, British authorities made the production an actual passport. Oh yes, Paddington is a U.K. citizen now — not bad (or, currently, believable) for someone who arrived as an illegal immigrant less than two years before the Brexit vote. In a little detail that didn’t make it onto screen, under “official observations” in the passport notes is one solitary word: Bear. “It seems the Home Office has a sense of humor,” says co-producer Rob Silva. 

It may have all sounded quite easy for “Paddington in Peru,” but a royal seal of approval and a physical passport aren’t gifts casually given to any film — or any fictitious bear. But these aren’t just any films. And Paddington isn’t just any fictitious bear.

“Paddington is just the best person in the whole wide world,” says Colman, who claims she signed up without hesitation (“Oh yeah, I mean, it’s Paddington!”). As she notes: “Imagine if everyone was like Paddington, wouldn’t that be lovely?”

First dreamed up by the late author Michael Bond and partially inspired by the sight of refugee children arriving in the U.K. during WWII, the mishap-prone yet endlessly polite and kind-hearted furball (who also has a “hard stare” reserved for those that might not follow his own strict moral code) was already among the country’s most adored residents. Thanks to well over 100 books — starting with “A Bear Called Paddington” in 1958 — and several TV adaptations, he’d reached the lofty heights of “national treasure,” a status mostly reserved for (very human) individuals such as David Attenborough and Judi Dench.

Who is and who isn’t allocated the unofficial title is a constant topic of debate (J.K. Rowling? Prince Harry?), but few would dare question Paddington’s credentials. It was the first “Paddington” film, however, in 2014 that elevated him from cherished icon on home soil (and a cuddly toy bought for practically every young tourist who stepped foot in a London airport) to Britain’s ambassador on the world stage. As Bond’s daughter Karen Jankel notes, it “brought him to a global audience.” In the U.S., many children were introduced to him for the very first time.

With Paddington painstakingly created and animated in CGI by Framestore, voiced by Ben Whishaw and starring alongside a Who’s Who of U.K. acting royalty — including Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Imelda Staunton and Jim Broadbent — the film proved to be an unexpected phenomenon, praised for taking all the charming elements of the books and lovingly blending them into a mix of sweet-natured warmth and Charlie Chaplin-esque slapstick. 

Jankel, who ran the Paddington & Co Company at the time, says there had been several “crazy” approaches about a film over the years, “like someone in a costume or full animation.” Nothing seemed right, until around 2006, when Alison pitched the elevated VFX-meets-live action concept, doing so alongside powerhouse producer David Heyman at Heyday Films, whose use of similar technology on the Harry Potter films convinced them it was worth giving it a try. “And when I saw that very first still of Paddington on screen, it was like meeting a relative for the first time… it moved me to tears,” says Jankel.

If the first “Paddington” proved that it was possible to honor a 50-year-old children’s literary icon using state-of-the-art technology, the sequel showed you could actually dial up the charm while building a money-making empire. Thanks in part to a scene-stealing Hugh Grant, 2017’s “Paddington 2” is still widely considered to be one of the very best films ever made. Indeed, a newly-unearthed negative review of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” actually saw “Paddington 2” briefly claim the top spot on Rotten Tomatoes’ best-rated list in 2021.

Combined with the first feature, the overall box office powered to more than $510 million, making “Paddington” the most successful independent family franchise of all time. It was a game-changer for Studiocanal, which had already bought the entire Paddington brand, with the exception of publishing, in 2016. 

The Vivendi-owned company had also proven itself to be wholly capable of “protecting Paddington” and not spoiling the look and personality of someone who famously arrived in London with a tag around his neck saying “Please look after this bear.” So it’s perhaps understandable — given the legacy that “Paddington” and “Paddington 2” have set — that those involved in “Paddington in Peru” have been feeling a little pressure to make sure the third outing is just right.

“I am under no illusions that ‘Paddington 2’ is in any way an easy act to follow,” says incoming director Dougal Wilson. “It’s actually one of the hardest acts to follow there is.”

Alison says Wilson was “very much first choice” to helm “Paddington in Peru” when King stepped down to take charge of Warner Bros.’ megahit “Wonka.” Wilson had not directed a full-length feature before, but he was a prominent force in the commercial and music video world and a multiple Cannes Lion Winner, best known in the U.K. for his work on the festive institutions that are the annual Christmas TV ads for department store chain John Lewis. There had been several previous attempts to lure him across to film, but he couldn’t turn down the bear. For Alison, he had the perfect “visual imagination and flair,” not to mention a “strong inner child … like Paddington.”

Wilson, for his part, reacted to his hiring with “shock and excitement.” “I felt very flattered,” he says, “but that soon gave way to terror and pathological trepidation.”

Bonneville, who plays Mr. Brown (and whose back-and-forths with Hawkins’ Mrs. Brown and their ursine foster child are a key element to the humor in the first two movies), recalls sitting in Wilson’s office. “He had storyboarded the film to within a frame of its life, and he was humming some music and being all the different characters. I warmed to him immediately.”

Crucially, Wilson also won over Studiocanal, for which “Paddington in Peru” marks its most expensive investment in any film to date. The budget is “considerably higher” than the second’s $40 million, says CEO Anna Marsh, pushed skyward not just by rising costs, but the scope and ambition of the project. For instance, in taking the adventure outside London to Peru, a second unit crew flew to South America to shoot for several weeks (including at Machu Picchu). Meanwhile, the retired bears home –– which was constructed in a forest near the U.K.’s Leavesden Studios –– gave Framestore considerably more animals to build and animate (in Peru, there are also a few llamas). By early August of this year more than 36.6 million hours –– 4,184 years –– of rendering had been done on the film by a team of 668 people.

Despite the high-stakes, Studiocanal put its faith in Wilson where another company might have opted for a more established hand. But as Marsh notes, echoing a sentiment felt across the board, the untested filmmaker “had an essential ‘Paddingtonian’ aura about him.” 

“Paddingtonian” — embodying all the positive values of the bear — is also a term producer Alison uses to describe a team she calls the “brain trust” of the films, which ensured that Wilson wasn’t going in alone.

On the writing side, there was Mark Burton (a longtime Aardman collaborator who co-wrote and directed “Shaun the Sheep Movie,” also for Studiocanal) plus Jon Foster and James Lamont (who also helped write the Queen’s Jubilee sketch). The trio contributed to the previous films and took over screenplay duties on “Paddington in Peru” when King and Simon Farnaby (who co-wrote the second and has cameos across all three) got “sucked into the vortex of success,” says Burton, and moved to “Wonka.”

“For anyone who gets involved in the ‘Paddington’ films, you sort of feel like you’re looking after the bear and taking care of him in the way the Browns do,” says Lamont.

Then there was Erik Wilson, who has been DoP across all three films, plus Javier Marzan, the professional clown who acted out many of Paddington’s more physical comedy scenes for the animators to work with. Perhaps top of the tree and considered the “Guardian of Paddington,” animation supervisor Pablo Grillo oversees the vast team at Framestore and has been shaping the look, feel and physical personality of the bear on screen since day one.

“Paddingtonian,” however, could also refer to the fact that, as with the klutzy four-pawed Peruvian himself, things don’t always go as planned.

Just a couple of months before he started shooting “Paddington in Peru,” Wilson was being airlifted off a ski slope in Austria while “loaded with fentanyl” having broken a hip bone in an accident “involving a cliff.”

“It was quite an experience,” he acknowledges more than a year on, still walking with a slight limp. It was also an ominous start for the production, but it wasn’t the first hiccup over the last decade of Paddington films.

Colin Firth was originally cast to voice the bear, until it was decided — in mid-2014, after principal photography on the first feature had already wrapped and he’d recorded most of his lines — that he didn’t sound youthful enough for a character Grillo says is “still very much a kid.” Firth very gracefully bowed out, and Whishaw signed on.

The second film would then get caught up in a distinctly un-“Paddingtonian” situation. The Weinstein Company had distributed “Paddington” in the U.S., but by the time “Paddington 2” came around, the scandal around Harvey Weinstein saw most production companies — including Heyday, which is producing “Paddington in Peru” — wanting to jump ship. It was Warner Bros. who eventually stepped in to save the film, paying a reported $28 million-$30 million. “Paddington 2” wound up earning just under $41 million in the U.S., down on the first’s $76.3 million — an underperformance that may have been related to a new distributor coming aboard so late. 

“Paddington in Peru” wasn’t without its upheavals, either. In mid 2023 — around the same time Colman and Banderas were unveiled as new additions to the cast, it was announced that Hawkins wouldn’t be returning as Mrs. Brown.

Bonneville suggests his co-star “just wanted to step away from everything for a little while,” and says that it was he who suggested a replacement in Emily Mortimer, who he’d got to know via “Downton Abbey” co-star Alessandro Nivola (Bonneville and Mortimer had both appeared in “Notting Hill,” but didn’t share any scenes). “Emily was just the first person who popped into my head.”

For Mortimer, having grown up on the books, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse, like “Paddington himself asking you to do something,” she says. But she was also good friends with Whishaw, the two having starred as the Banks siblings in “Mary Poppins Returns.” So when it came to filming, rather than simply talking to a tennis ball — or more often Paddington’s on-set stand-in Lauren Barrand (a veteran since the first) — she “just kept imagining Ben.” Whishaw adds that “it was a joy to learn” Mortimer was joining the cast.

And so, undaunted by a first-time feature director with a sore hip and a new Mrs. Brown, “Paddington in Peru” began principal photography in the U.K. in the summer of 2023. On account of the actors and writers strikes in the U.S., the film was the biggest in production at the time. The strikes did, however, result in the departure of Rachel Zegler, the only SAG actress in the cast, who had been attached to play Banderas’ daughter. She was replaced by newcomer Carla Tous.

Despite the seven years between “Paddington 2” and “Paddington in Peru,” for the many millions of bear-watchers, he’s never truly gone away.

Some of this is intentional, part of global brand-building by Studiocanal, which also launched the daytime Emmy-winning “Adventures of Paddington” pre-school animated series (also created by Foster and Lamont), recently opened a Paddington Experience in London and has a West End stage musical in the works for next year. 

But much publicity has been delightfully unplanned. Alongside the chart-toppling of “Citizen Kane,” headlines were sparked in early 2022 when it emerged that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his previous life as a TV comedian, had voiced Paddington in local dubs of the first two films. Then there was a viral scene from the comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” in which an emotional Pedro Pascal expresses his adoration for “Paddington 2” to Nicolas Cage. “It made me want to be a better man,” he soulfully exclaims. Cage is later seen struggling to contain his emotions after watching it for the first time. “‘Paddington 2’ is incredible,” he declares while wiping tears from his eyes.

Crowning all of this, of course, was Paddington’s afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace. More tears may well be shed when a photo from this is spotted in “Paddington in Peru,” a film that — if Wilson and his team have done their jobs — should have audiences leaving cinemas with a renewed sense of “Paddingtonian” kindness and compassion.

Seven years may be a long time to wait in the franchise film world, but there’s clearly optimism that the continued love for all things Paddington will spur audiences to his latest family adventure. Not that this is doing Wilson any favors.

“It’s amazing how it’s become so iconic and so part of the national consciousness,” he says. “But it does fuel my apprehension about how much is expected of the third one.” He adds, “All we can do is try our hardest to make the best film we can,” something you can almost hear the bear uttering himself.