Major Downton Abbey news revealed ahead of 15th birthday

Downton Abbey 3 is current in production and will return to the big screen on a very special occasion, days ahead of its 15th birthday.

Focus Features and Universal Pictures International are bringing the wildly successful ITV/PBS series back to fans with the third film, currently in production, and have announced it will release worldwide on September 15, 2024.

The first series, comprising seven episodes, premiered in the UK on September 26.

© Jaap Buitendijk / Focus Features

The show explores the lives of the fictional Crawley family and their domestic servants in the early 20th century. The show ran for six series, as well as five Christmas specials, and two big screen releases.

Downton Abbey was set in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of the same name, and began in 1912.

The show told the story of the fictional lives of the upper classes and lower classes in England, as they were impacted by real life events including World War One and Two, the Spanish Influence, the 1923 British election and the rise of the working classes in British society.

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  Downton Abbey 3: All we know from new and returning cast to plot and location details

© Carnival Films/Joss Barratt

Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern will both return for the new film as the 7th Earl of Grantham and his wife Cora, along with Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael as their daughters Mary and Edith, Jim Carter and Phyllis Logan as Charlie and Elsie Carson, and others including Robert James-Collier , Joanne Froggatt, Allen Leech and Penelope Wilton.

Alessandro Nivola and Simon Russell Beale join the cast as newcomers, while Dominic West, who portrayed Guy Dexter in the second film, will return as will Paul Giamatti, who played Cora Grantham's brother Harold Levinson in a previous Christmas special.

© Nick Briggs

Simon Curtis is returning to direct after helming 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era.

However Dame Maggie Smith will not return as Crawley matriarch, Lady Violet, following her passing at the end of the sequel film.

© Focus Features/Moviestore/Shutterstock

"People who've watched the show over the years and have loved it will miss Maggie Smith's presence," said 60-year-old Hugh . "She doesn't step out of the shower and it's all been a dream, she is gone. But, I think there's so much warmth and fun to enjoy, and new elements as well — which I won't spoil — that I think it'll certainly be the best iteration of the film versions yet."

Speaking to Yahoo , he added that production on the new movie feels like a "lovely coming together of people" and is full of "thrills and spills".