In January of 2015, StudioCanal claimed that a little bear would make a big splash prior to the arrival of Paddington bear on the big screen – and splash he did. With a global box office haul reaching over $220 million, the big-screen rendition of Michael Bond’s beloved, marmalade-munching mammal proved to be a huge success among audiences and critics alike, leading to the all-too-predictable chatter of a sequel.
Shortly after the release of Paddington, StudioCanal revealed that it was marinating on the concept of a follow-up, though according to producer David Heyman, both he and director Paul King approached the charming feature as an individual property, and refused to dwell on the possibility of a sequel. Now, in a recent interview with Collider, Heyman revisited the topic and revealed that Paddington 2 is now in its “very early days,” and that the main goal is to engineer a story that is ultimately worth telling.
It’s very early days. Let’s just say that we’re in talks. That’s where we are. We’re having conversations. Paul has to decide that he wants to do it, and we have to come up with a story that we feel works. If we do that, then we’ll be on our way.
It’s funny, even with Harry Potter, it was all about the film that we were making. If you think about the sequel, than you’re getting ahead of the game. The key is, if you make a good first film and audiences respond, than hopefully you’ll have the opportunity to do a sequel. We just tried to tell a good story to make a film that was as good of a film as possible. Hopefully, each one is better than the last.
Sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we didn’t with Potter. And hopefully, we’ll succeed with the second Paddington. It’s about looking at each film as a film on its own. We didn’t plan ahead. When we were trying to get the money, one of the things we talked about was that it could be a series. But in making it, that’s not how we approached it. We approached it as an individual film.
Paddington 2 is evidently in the nascent stages of development, though if King were to reclaim his seat in the director’s chair, the filmmaker wouldn’t be left wanting for source material, as there is an array of literature documenting the titular bear’s adventures across land, air and sea.
Tell us, which novel would you like to see King and Co. tap for a potential sequel, if the opportunity presents itself?