Why I’m saying bye to Paddington
Director Paul King on passing up ‘Paddington 3’ — and what he’s got planned instead
DON’T SHOW THIS to Paddington, or there’ll be tears in his marmalade sandwich. Paul King, the director who breathed such joyful, whimsical, inventive life into the little bear for both Paddington and Paddington 2, is hanging up his anorak for the threequel. “Paddington has been one of the great treats of my life,” says King, talking exclusively to Empire. “But at some point, you just have to stop. It might be time for somebody else to do a twist on it. I’m trying not to do a third bear movie. Which,” he adds, self-deprecatingly, “is a huge, huge mistake.”
Instead, King will only be an executive producer on the currently-in-development movie. The general assumption had been
that King would complete a trilogy (after all, trilogies are neat), and then move on. But, as King points out, this is not a story with an end in sight. “They can make hundreds of them,” he says. “If it had been a trilogy and this third chapter is it, then you go and do your Nolan. But it’s not like Paddington dies at the end. He doesn’t ascend into the sky on a rocket-powered marmalade jar. I mean, I don’t want to spoil anything…”
Instead, King will be turning his attention to a number of other projects, which are in various stages of readiness. “I’m doing far too much all at the same time,” he laughs. He’s working on something with Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby, about which he’s not ready to talk, as well as a script for a Willy Wonka movie for Paddington producer David Heyman. And if that weren’t enough, he’s teamed up with writer Jon Croker to adapt Glyn Maxwell’s poem, ‘Time’s Fool: A Tale In Verse’. “It’s about somebody who gets stuck in time, kind of like a reverse Brigadoon,” King says. “And it’s based on a 500-page poem, so that’s very commercial.”
King will still be involved with ‘Paddington 3’, which is currently at the scripting stage, as an executive producer. He’s obviously keen to make a movie that doesn’t revolve around a CG bear, no matter how cute he is, but there’s also clearly an internal struggle going on. “Every time I engage with it, I sort of want to stop and just throw my all into it.” He says he’s done, but maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t take that marmalade off the boil just yet.