The hit series ended in 2015, but now Downton Abbey the movie hits cinemas next week. Set two years after the events of the final episode, the 1927-set movie sees King George V visit the stately home. Even though the film hasn’t been released yet, there’s already rumours of a sequel and show creator and writer Lord Julian Fellowes has spoken out on the matter. The 70-year-old appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today alongside leading lady Elizabeth McGovern.
On Downton Abbey 2, Lord Fellowes said: “I never say never anymore.
“I’m too old for that. Because the moment you say never you immediately swallow it a month later.
“And the fact is I don’t know. I think it rather depends as to how the picture is received and we will all have a think about whether we want to go there again.”
The Oscar-winner also spoke of the pressure and nerves of making a Downton Abbey movie.
He said: “People always talk about the pressure because of everyone’s expectations.
“The only time when there is no pressure is when it’s a flop.”
READ MORE: DOWNTOWN ABBEY MOVIE WORLD EXCLUSIVE VIDEO WITH ALL THE STARS AND NEW SCENES
Lord Fellowes added: So I mean on the whole it’s better to be a hit and have some pressure. I think most people will go that way.”
While McGovern said: “I’m sure I wasn’t as nervous as Julian Fellowes who had, really, this incredibly challenging task of getting it right.
“Of not letting people down but not giving them exactly the same thing that we served up in the series.”
On the inspiration for the film’s storyline, Lord Fellowes said: “In this instance, we were looking for a situation that would affect everyone, that would affect the servants and the family and the people who lived locally and all of the rest of it.
“That was the specific thing. And I was reading a book, a rather marvellous book called Black Diamonds, about the Fitzwilliams family in Yorkshire and they, had a visit from the King and Queen in 1912 and, as I was reading it, I thought this is it! I think that was the main motivational thing, and also because it’s a good thing, a joyous thing, a happy thing and not gloom and doom.”
