Downton Abbey 3 Sets Release Date & Announces New & Returning Cast Members

Julian Fellowes is beckoning fans back to Yorkshire. Focus Features, Carnival Films, and Universal Pictures have announced that filming is underway on Downton Abbey 3, with a global theatrical release date of September 12, 2025. The film will reportedly be the final film in the series. The film will continue the story of the Crawley family, who struggle to keep their British estate through personal trials and the events of World War I. Plot details are currently under wraps, but it is expected to take place in the years between World Wars I and II, where the second film ended.

Downton Abbeybegan as a series in 2010, airing on ITV in Britain, with a 2011 premiere on PBS in the United States. The series ran for 52 episodes over six seasons, winning 15 Primetime Emmys in the process. It jumped to the silver screen in 2019, and a sequel followed in 2022. The cast is led by Hugh Bonneville as Robert Grantham, Elizabeth McGovern as Cora Grantham, Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary, Jim Carter as Mr. Carson, Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith, and Phyllis Logan as Mrs. Hughes. All are returning for the third film.

Much of the filming is expected to take place at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, which stands in for the fictional Downton Abbey. The castle is located 70 miles north of London and filming is expected to continue throughout the summer. Last month, the third film was officially announced, as the Downton Abbey cast assembled for a table read for the new film, with video posted to social media. “It feels amazing,” Dockery said of the cast reassembling for a third film. “It’s kind of emotional. It’s wonderful to be back together again. It feels like no time has passed.”

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The new film will have to carry on without one of its key members. Maggie Smith, who played the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, died at the end of the second film, and she is not expected to return, not even in a flashback.

​​​​​​​Also returning for the third film are original cast members 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. They will be joined by newer cast members Paul Giamatti, Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale, and Arty Froushan.

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DowntonAbbey creator and Academy-Award winner Julian Fellowes is writing the script, and BAFTA and Emmy Award nominee Simon Curtis will direct, after helming the 2022 sequel Downton Abbey: A New Era. Michael Engler directed the first film. BAFTA and Emmy Award-winner Gareth Neame, Fellowes and BAFTA and Emmy Award-winner Liz Trubridge are producing.