'Paddington in Peru' Now A Valentine's Day 2025 Movie
Samuel Joslin, Madeleine Harris, Emily Mortimer, Hugh Bonneville and Julie Walters in 'Paddington in Peru'
Peter Mountain/Sony
Before the advent of streaming, TV and movies ran on a cycle. Networks produced new episodes of their shows from September to May, with a long holiday break and summers off. Movies dropped their blockbusters at the top of the summer and mid-July, with the awards bait arriving from September to December. The box office bombs were discarded during the doldrums of August, plus January and February before the Oscars. Most of that has fallen by the wayside in the last decade, but January is still where films that coulda-shoula-woulda been Oscar contenders go to die.
Hence, when Sony announced that Paddington in Peru, the third film in the very popular trilogy, would be getting a mid-January 2025 release date, it seemed an odd choice. The date suggested the producers were worried that the new director, Dougal Wilson (taking over from Paul King after two hit films), might not be up to snuff and were hedging by giving it a date in the dead of winter.
These worries turned out to be unfounded. Paddington in Peru received rave reviews when it opened in the U.K. in November 2024, and now Sony is hurrying to push release dates around the calendar to give Paddington a new arrival date, Valentine's Day Weekend, which Disney and Marvel have recently turned into the first major box office weekend on the calendar.
The logline for the threequel reads:
Paddington returns to Peru to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown Family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon rainforest and up to the mountain peaks of Peru.
The returning voice cast for Paddington includes Ben Whishaw (This Is Going to Hurt), Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Julie Walters (Indian Summers), Imelda Staunton (The Crown), Madeleine Harris (The White Queen), and Samuel Joslin, who has made his career as Paddington's BFF Jonathan. New voices will include Emily Mortimer (The New Look), taking over the role of Mrs. Brown from Sally Hawkins, Olivia Colman (Empire of Light), Jim Broadbent (My Lady Jane), Amit Shah (Happy Valley), and Antonio Banderas (The Masks of Zorro).
Dougal Wilson takes over directing from the Paddington franchise's initial director, Paul King. who wrote and directed the first two films about the beloved bear from the children’s stories by British author Michael Bond. King wrote the story for the third film with his collaborators Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton, with the latter turning it into a screenplay with Jon Foster and James Lamont.
Paddington in Peru arrives in theaters in the U.S. on Friday, February 14, 2025.
