'Downton Abbey' Masterminds See Long Future for Franchise Beyond New Sequel

of the movie's production outfit, Carnival Films. Together they have overseen a property that has crossed over from mere global TV sensation to full fledged franchise. They're here to talk about this process. Coming up next on Strictly Business, and we're back with Julian Fellows and Gareth Name, the ark gitext behind Dalton Abbey, which is returning to theaters this week for a sequel. Thanks for coming on the podcast, gentlemen, Thank you ver much. Thanks so, Julian's let's start with you.

It's been probably about thirteen years since Dalton was first conceived and began, and so I have to ask, did you have any inkling back then about how big this would become, that this would eventually even jump over to movies. Um No. The short answer to that is no, But um, I think it was a It was a different climate at that time when period drama was thought to have died and that the audience wasn't there for it anymore.

And Gareth didn't believe that, uh, and nor did I, and nor did Peter at I t V uh And so we were in a sense, how to prove something. The idea was originally Garrett's that he gone to see Gosford a park of film I wrote, and we were having dinner actually about another project completely, but in the middle of it he said, would you ever go back into that territory for television? And that was really the

beginning of the idea. Although Downtown is much warm up than Gosford, it's a much cuddlier place where you know, Gosford is all about compromises and reluctant decisions and wrong decisions and so on, whereas on the whole in Downtown everyone is doing their best and it is essentially a warm world they live in. But nevertheless, you can see how the one was inspired by the other. And then we went forward it actually it was it was quite an event less wasn't it getting it going? Because you

went to pet and you and that was it. Really. I think we had a meeting and I was commissioned right one script and I wrote it, and they commissioned a series and we made this Seips. It was a rather trouble free journey. But of course, to answer your question, no, we thought we would make a successful period drama. That was what we set out to do. We had a

jolly good cast and um, and we did it. But the kind of enormous global phenomenon really started a year later when it came out in America and then it went all over the world and then it turned into a sort of magic carpet ride. Gareth, can you take us back to that time where the period drama seemed dead? Why did it seem dead and why did you think it could come back to life? Well, I don't quite agree with Julian in that respect. I did. I never

thought it was dead. Um, it's a perennial favorite. And when I got to know Julian in the early two thousand's, and I was not only you know, I'd watch Gosfie part as a viewer and I thought, you know this, this was you know, it was the attention to detail, and it was the knowledge. I watched that film and I sort of relaxed into my theater chair, thinking, this is the most realistic depiction that I've ever seen in my life. And I think everything that came before it

I didn't really believe and I now believe this. And then I started reading sort of Julian's novels and I thought, this is and I mean, you know, the Academy Award that that he one for the screenplayer gossip part should have been enough. But you know that combined with the with reading Julian's novels, I thought, this is a writer that has something to say right around the world, and it is highly commercially with my production company hat On.

I just thought, this is this is a you know, and as a British producer, I'm I'm always looking for expressly British topics. There are certain you know, there are certain subjects that are done all over the world, but the English country house, the class system that you know, the British Empire and all that kind of thing is is a unique sort of British subject for drama. And I thought, this is, you know, really something that I think could be highly popular both in the UK and

around the world. So UM And around the same time that I was getting to know Julie and I watched, I happened to see a historic episode of Upstairs Downstairs. I didn't sit down and watch it, but I was flicking through the channels one day and I find I found on channel three hundred and sixty eight. I found this nineteen seven early nineteen seventies episode of a show that had been popular in Britain and America called Upstairs Downstairs.

It was a similar sort of set up, but I so I knew what the show was as soon as I alighted on the channel. I knew what it was, but I've never watched it. And I thought at the time, I was about forty or something, and I thought, if I've never watched it, because I was too young to have seen it, there's two generations, you know, behind me that have never have never been exposed to this UM,

And I thought, you know what this is. This is a perennial favorite, and what Julian was doing in in in Gossip Park is something that would work as well or or better actually an episodic television because you play to the strengths of you know, an audience becoming familiar with the characters and taking them, you know, to their heart and and and becoming more more and more vested

in in the whole thing. And so yeah, so we so Julie and I met up and I said, I think we should do this as an episodic TV series, And so that's how it came about. And as I said, I never thought the genre was over it. It's the genre, like many of these genres that that that need constantly reinventing. So Julian, I mean it's I was like Gareth had a different take on it, and I want to go back to you, what at that time had you souring on the period drama? What needed to be reinvented? We

just I've had a couple of things turned down. I mean in my personal life, a couple of things turned down because period drama. They didn't really want to get into it, you know. I when this happens from time to time with all different companies and channels and everything, it's not a big thing. But also Peter, I keep forgetting his surname. What is his name? At the I t V. The head of I TV them was called

Peter Fincham Fincham. Um. He was telling me that when he decided to make Dumbton, a lot of his friends said, oh no, that's that's all finished, all that you you'll lose your shirts on that. Dude, you shouldn't do that because it was obviously going to be very expensive. Um. So it was just a kind of thing I picked up. I mean, I don't suppose I thought it was dead forever, because nothing is dead forever. The question is whether instead now and and that that was what he had been

told and what I had been told. But it turned out that Gareth was right. It wasn't dead, and there was an audience for it. I suppose looking back, there just wasn't at that time a period drama that was a particularly big hit, and so it's sort of kept

it out of the footlights a bit. It amused. It amuses me a bit that you talk about it being expensive, because of course that first season on television in we now look back on it as being extraordinarily cheap compared with absolutely and of course doubt and I think without question reinvigorated the genre. Fast forward to today where the gentlemen also have another hit here in US on HBO with the Gilded Age. Netflix has its own version with Bridgerton.

Do you guys take credit it for the reinvigoration of this genre and how do you explain it's enduring appeal? Well, I think that's possibly easier for me to answer than Julie. It feels a little less personal. Um. You know, I do think that Downton that there's no question in my mind that it that it that it started a journey not only one that that that rediscovered period drama and put it front and center, but but also of course

globalized television production. It was Downton was the most successful non American television show in the US. Um and um. It was the first foreign show that really delivered a value globally that was equivalent to a Hollywood TV series. So it was in that sense, absolutely groundbreaking. And it also caused all of the other you know, I mean, by the time we made Downtown I Company, I sold the company to Universal, so we were already part of

the Hollywood that the US media landscape. But it caused all the other competitors to send executives to London. Uh. You know. Now now it's all the studios for many years now, I've had London operations and you know, Netflix are very big in the rest of the world, headquartered out of London, Apple, m Amazon. You know, it really opened the door to to to the idea that that a foreign show could be as successful globally and could make as much money. And that was a simple fact.

And yes, you're I won't repeat all the examples that that that you've you've given us, that there are other shows, well, actually I will. I mean, yes, Bridgeton, but I think it's impossible to imagine um Netflix making the Crown without the success that Downton Abbey had globally. So I think it really did unlock a greatly creately and the creative potential that was there anywhere and down to really began

that journey. I think we were also though, part of the movement that had sort of started in America with the reinvention of serial television with Ian west Wing and Madman and you know, Good To all of these shows where they had taken the multiarch storylines at the endless sixteen stories happening in one episode and all the rest of it, which I'd sort of learned from all and then gone on with But I think we quite deliberately

structure that time. It looked incredibly English and it sounded incredibly English, but in fact its structure had more in common with those American shows that had reinvented television than indeed with sort of Jewel in the Crown or something of twenty or thirty years before. And it was this kind of television for people with attention deficit. It's order, you know, with sixteen things happening simultaneously. Uh. That I think invigorated period drama and made it seem modern and

very watchable and so on. And we were part of that rebirth really of television. Yeah, you're you're absolutely right. We had this, remember that first dinner when we when we cooked up this idea. It was a strange mix.

We talked about of all of the English sort of the classic um English drama of merchant Ivory if you're familiar with those songs from from the eighties, the sort of you know, the country house and the aristocracy and the class and the uh, you know, the sort of comedy of manners, but with the pace of storytelling of

West Wing and the west Wing analogy. We used a lot because the West Wing is about an entire uh you know workplace that is where you've got dozens of people who were all doing their thing serving one man who is the president. And we saw the connection with this new idea that we had that this was going to be about dozens of people who were all it serve um Law, Grantham and his family, so and mostly in one environment. You know, it is sort of in

one place. So yes, it was that sort of West Wing pace of storytelling and focus combined with the lavish um you know, English charm of merchant ivory. Well, after producing six seasons of television, you made the jump with a to the movies with a first hit two and thirty eight million dollars in global box office, which I would assume you guys realized was certainly not guaranteed. There's been plenty of TV shows, successful shows that have failed

to make the jump to theaters. What was it about Doubton that you think enabled it to succeed to the point where here you are with a second one who's going to answer that? I think I have an idea which is that, although I mean, you're quite right, this this was the gamble, This was the question mark was would we succeed in making the transition, because plenty of people haven't in the past. But I think the conception of that it was quite cinematic when it was on television,

and it was quite deliberately for that. If you remembered, the very first shot of the very first episode was an enormous traveling shot at where you went through all the drawing rooms and libraries, and you walked into the hall and you went around. It was all a continuous shot that was a very filmic opening, and it was rather like the famous one of us at Wells or whatever.

And I think always because the house was a principal character, we had a sort of scale of the visuals hide of the show that was essentially cinematic, and all the cinema would do was give us more opportunity to exploit the house and be able to show more of it and more of the scale, and that, you know, these aerial shots and all the rest of it. So I

don't think we act to change. I mean, normally, when a television show becomes a film, it's quite difficult because it looks different, it is differently conceived, and you don't feel you're coming home whereas we didn't have that, we were able legitimately to expure not to bring the house onto the big screen and get even more out of it. Frankly, so I think that made it, made it easier. But I mean, you know, it's there's a lot of luck in these things. I don't think we should ever forget that.

I agree about the cinema, that the sort of the sense of cinema about that that there was inherent in the show, which is unlike a lot of television, particularly television at the time. Perhaps not so much now, but at the time that there was television and film, and I think we we already filled that small screen. So the sense of you know, that goes back again to that you know, the merchant Ivory sort of them, uh you know, starting point. It had that rich full screen

idea too. But I think the other thing is that we ended the television show. You know, we quit earlier. I think, you know, we this wasn't a television series that went on for eight seasons or nine or ten and the like shows. You I mean, no, no, nothing does now. But but you know, ten twenty years ago, it was about really squeezing as much as you possibly could about episodic television, and we didn't do that. We

got out. I I think we feel we got out a year or two earlier than we might have done, and I think that really did leave the fans thinking it wasn't quite over. Um, so there was certainly an appetite for these characters. Again, you're listening to the strictly bi in this podcast. Will be back in a second with more with Julian Fellows and Gareth Name. We're back talking with Julian Fellows and Gareth Named, the architects behind Downton Abbey, which is back in theaters this week with

the sequel titled The New Era. We were just talking about translating the movie, sorry, translating the intellectual property to the movies. The New Era movie is I think releasing him to a very different climate than the last one. Uh. It's become a very challenged place in theaters for pretty much anything that's not a Marvel superhero movie or or a horror film. Um. Gareth, do you have any apprehension

about how Doubton will resonate this time around? Yes, he's of course, he's a challenging times and we were very lucky with the first movie, I feel that we we hit the sweet spot, having been released in September twenty nine and it's finished its theatrical run globally by the end of twenty nine, so the timing was very fortunate. UM. And really, you know, this second installment of downs and

has filled the space ever since we started. Julie and I worked on the script in the first lockdown of spring of twenty twenty and we got the film together that autumn, and then making the film in one was very challenging, UM, because of all of the lockdowns and the COVID protocols and all of that. So all the way through making this and this was a film like many other films and TV shows have been made in

this new culture. UM. So yes, we we go out into the world in in very different times and where the sequencing of UM distribution is different, where where you know, films, uh, you know come to other platforms much more quickly than they did even three years ago, so that there's no doubt about the whole landscape is very very different to

what it was just three years ago. And Julian, you know, it's entirely possible given how unpredictable this COVID marketplace, is that your film could have potentially not have released in theaters. It could have gone straight to streaming or something like that. Would that have been a problem for you. You've talked about how Doubton is such a distinctly cinematic experience. Are

you glad that it's going to actually be in cinemas? Oh, of course I'm glad, yes, because, as you say quite rightly, there was a real possibility at one point that it wouldn't be an Indeed, I made another film during lockdown which was hardly in cinemas and went straight onto a platform because you couldn't get anyone to leave the house. So, uh,

there's always that side. But I mean, actually, the truth is we have lived through a sort of ten or twenty period when the nature of release, of showing the demonstration platforms where where ordinary terrestrial channels now seem like some sort of Victorian table draping. You know, everything has changed, and I think you just have to try and keep

your feet and rock and roll with what's happening. What I do think is that you know, there's a big audience for this film for when it's sounds other vay to say that, but but for when it does hit a platform, because I was attacked in my hotel this morning by a woman at breakfast who said, my husband is six and will not go into a cinema. He wants to know when it's going to be on a platform.

And of course I know nothing, you know, but I think there are quite a lot of that generation who will wait to see it until they feel they can do so safely. So we just have to see what effect that adds on us. And you know, I'm happy and I'm happy that it's in cinemas in Britain already, and and the feedback we're getting is obviously very nice. But on the other hand, that's madely from one's friends, so that's that's what they would say, wouldn't they. But

nevertheless it seems quite positive. Well, and I would say, all you respected for that lady and the elderly husband. But you know, we do want we do want fans to come back to theaters. You know, um, you know, America is the home of cinema and that's the you know, it's it's the largest market, but it's the rest of the markets in the world all put together, and we want people to come to theaters to see this because it is beloved titles that that like Downtown will bring

people back to theaters. And you know, as much as I have you know, huge or and utter respect for Marvel and all that it does, we do not want movie theaters to become just about Marvel. And we want the fans of Downton to come and see it and for this to be the title that they come back to theaters and and enjoy, you know, in that that shared experience. This is a very moving film and a very funny film. I mean it's the first film was very funny. And you know, in these actors, we have

extremely good comedic actors as well as dramatic actors. And Julian's writing. The great genius of it is the mix of drama, romance, all these things, but you know, a healthy dose of comedy in the writing as well. And this is a very funny film. And I think it's a you know, Julian and I have seen it a few times now with audiences in theaters, and it is a great audience experience. So with great respect to the late eighties gentlemen, who's going to watch it at home?

And I hope you as wife, absolutely love it, and many others will see it that way as well. For those off later, you'll off saying that for those of us who for those of us who love the movie going experience, you know, I really hope we'll pull the stops out and come out and return to theaters like we used to. Gareth, you just use the M word Marvel, and so I'm going to use the F word franchise. Do you see Downton as a franchise in the way

Marvel or James Bond is considered a franchise? Because I would think after six seasons of TV, two movies, who knows how many more, is it okay to use the F word? Well, I suppose it might be a kind of franchise, but the comparisons that you offer up are so radically different that you know, I mean, not a superhero in sight and all of that. Um, you know,

it's a different kind of franchise. If it is, it's clearly Um Julian created and the characters were realized by these these fantastic act as something that um that audiences don't want to let go of. And there's something about that world and the the you know, it's possibly one of the most successful depictions of a family over a long period of time ever um ever enjoyed on screen, actually, and people connect with that and they don't want to

let it go. So I think we we both feel that, you know, we hope there's more, and there's more to do, and but possibly quite a unique franchise compared to any other that you could that you could reference. Yes, I mean I think so. Do you think it's finished? I mean, you know, lives aren't finished until people die, and characters aren't finished until they die. There's there's there's nothing more

to say about that. We can go on with these people as long as the audience wants to go on seeing them and as long as they enjoy them, and we can, you know, do that in all sorts of different ways. I don't know if that makes it a franchise or a phenomenon, but either way, I don't see any reason to call a halt. But if there's still an appetite on the market, really well, to that end, Julian, are you already thinking about, huh, what could a third movie, a fourth movie, spin off TV show? I mean, are

you thinking like that? Well, I think it's impossible not to think like that a bit because you know that these possibilities exist, and one doesn't want to just sit there slack Jordan glassy eyed if the topic comes up. Um, So I think we are or I am exploring what

might work. But you know we've seen them developed. I mean, one of the storylines of this film is that the final kind of revealing of Mary as being in charge and as running the place, and also in her own storyline, showing that she is capable of the different behaviors and adjustments are required in the earlier to mid twentieth century, so that she's perfectly able to have a normal conversation with the producer director h And you know there's that

moment when she's on the set and he he says, oh, lady Mary, so it says just Mary at leads and you realize that she's making herself modern in a way that would be beyond her father. So we're already, if you like, taking it on into the next stage where she's concerned in this film. So I don't see any reason why we can't go on, because you know, these families did exist, do exist. One of them lives in in the House where we film and High Clear and

they're still there. And obviously getting through those years some of the very difficult ones meant lots of imagination and getting down to it and taking different tax and I think there's a story of the House is survival to be told. So you know, there's there's no reason that you can't go on with it. I mean, there is the moment if a series is about the war, there's a moment when the war comes to an end. But this war never comes to an end. So I don't

see why we couldn't go on. I would agree I could see this, if I may call it a franchise go on for decades. And Gareth, you know you're over Carnival Films as part of the NBC Universal family, where they know franchise maintenance, big cultural difference. But I'm going to mention a movie Fast and Furious, And I just wonder whether you know, the top dogs at Comcast haven't spoken to you about how do we keep this going ten twenty years or are you starting to speak the

language of franchise. But in the specialty film marketplace, you know, the downtown is definitely in that, you know, it's it's it's the Holy Grail. It's part of that, you know. It's in the special, it's in the VI I P Lounge, UM, and it's it's the kind of content really that all these studios look to achieve, um and you know, and we didn't. We didn't do that by setting out make a huge TV and movie franchise that we you know,

and nobody ever should approach it that way. Julian and I sat down, uh, fifteen years ago over dinner and had an idea for something that we thought might you know, it might work, but it was something we wanted to make and we thought it might be popular. And this is a great attraction of you knows, as you know as a producer, is that you might create you know, one sort twice, if you're lucky in a career, you might create some content that is there for the for

the for the long haul. And I agree, I echo what Julian says that we've got to be you know, wise to the future and think of those possibilities and any number of things could happen in the future. And that's all very exciting and we'll see. But you're you're right, your question is a good one, you know, we're we're we're in a We're part of a company whose job it is to make the most of this succeptional content.

When these companies create that content, they should make the most of it because there is an a they can make money from it, but audiences love it. And when audiences love something, well, that's what we came into this job for. Well, and I think you could end on an any better note than that. I'm looking forward to the future of this French guys, Julian Fellows and Gareth Named thank you for joining me today on Strictly Business. Well, thank you scares good to see. This has been another

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