Director and writer Paul King delivered two near-perfect movies with 2014’s Paddington and the 2017 follow-up Paddington 2. Both were heartfelt, compassionate, and beautifully constructed; Paddington 2 was even the highest-rated movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes until a single negative review brought it all crashing down. But the third film, 2024’s Paddington in Peru, switched up the creative team, with Dougal Wilson taking over as director and Mark Burton, Jon Foster, and James Lamont on screenwriting duties. They couldn’t recapture the magic of the first two films, though, resulting in a movie that was just okay—fine, really, but a noticeable downgrade.
Perhaps that’s why Paddington 4 is switching things up again. Variety reports that StudioCanal has tapped Veep creator Armando Iannucci, along with his longtime creative partner Simon Blackwell, to write the script for Paddington 4. Wilson is also reportedly in talks to return as director.
Iannucci, known for his sharp political satire (he also created In the Loop and The Thick of It, which poke fun at British politics in a similar way to Veep‘s sendup of the American government), might not seem like an obvious choice for the franchise at first glance, but both Paddington and Paddington 2 are explicitly about the moral imperative of kindness and helping one’s neighbors in times of need, which really shouldn’t be a radical political statement but somehow is in our current climate. Paddington 2 is also explicitly about prison reform, which is an absurd but nonetheless true sentence.
Given the franchise’s history, Iannucci is a great choice for getting it back to its roots after Paddington in Peru strayed from what made the first two movies special. Paddington 4 is currently in development.
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