"Paddington In Peru" to Begin Production in July

The long-awaited threequel movie, "Paddington In Peru", will begin production on July 24.

The movie is the third installment in the critically and audience-acclaimed "Paddington" franchise.

It has been six years since the second movie in the hit franchise and the plot details for the third installment are under wraps, but as the title suggests, the movie will see Paddington getting into sticky situations in the deepest, darkest Peru, his country of birth.

It is expected for Ben Whishaw to be back as the voice of Paddington but no official word on that yet. Colin Firth was originally due to voice the bear, but bowed out and was replaced by Whishaw late into the project.

The franchise also featured Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins as the family that takes him in. 

The movie will be a combination of returning cast and newcomers. Previous cast members have included Peter Capaldi, Nicole Kidman, and Hugh Grant, who was praised for his role as the villainous washed-up actor Phoenix Buchanan in the second movie. 

The third installment will reunite producer Studiocanal, which is once again fully financing, with Heyday, producers of the first two movies as well as the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movies.

The story comes from Paddington 1 & 2 collaborators Paul King, Simon Farnaby, and Mark Burton with a screenplay by Burton, Jon Foster, and James Lamont. Music videos and commercials director Dougal Wilson is making his feature debut.

Producers are David Heyman and Rosie Alison with Rob Silva as co-producer while execs include Paul King, Tim Wellspring, Jeffrey Clifford, Anna Marsh, and Ron Halpern.

The two previous movies scored more than $500M between them at the box office and both were BAFTA-nominated.

Paddington Bear was created by Michael Bond and named after the London station where he was found.

The bear first appeared in 1958 in the book "A Bear Called Paddington", which centered around how he packed off from dark Peru and made his way to Britain where he was adopted by the Brown family. 

Bond passed away in 2017 and the second movie was dedicated to him. 

A number of the film collaborators were also behind a popular 2019 kids' TV show "The Adventures of Paddington", which aired on Nickelodeon and is now on Netflix.

The last time viewers saw Paddington he was memorably enjoying tea with the late Queen Elizabeth II.