If there’s one lesson that the last few years of ursine pop culture dominance have made clear, it’s this: Don’t fuck with Paddington Bear. Paul King’s two films about everybody’s favorite bumbling Peruvian ex-pat have made nearly half-a-billion at the box office, while bringing in clamoring, near-unanimous praise from critics. (2017's Paddington 2 still holds the record as the highest-rated film in Rotten Tomatoes history.) Now, he’s extending his all-powerful, marmalade-covered paw into the world of television, too, with Nickelodeon announcing that there’s a CG-animated Paddington TV series in the works.
This isn’t going to be some cheap-ass Corduroy knock-off shit, either; per Variety, franchise star Ben Whishaw will be back to voice Big Paddy B himself. (Michael Hordern voiced him—and everybody else—in the stop-motion TV version from the 1970s.) Meanwhile, the show itself will be aimed toward pre-school audiences, further indoctrinating them into a world where cheerfulness is mandatory, and the citrus preserves flow like extremely sticky wine.
16 Comments
Okay, but in a world where everything is so dark and full of hate and anger, we need Paddington Brown.
The Dark Bear Rises
2 Paddington 2 Furious
CHAOS REIGNS
We should make a movie where Paddington Bear doesn’t exist, and instead, I get famous for getting lost in London or whatever the bear does.
He farts a lot and says, “I say, did *I* do that?” or “’ere’s a Brexit fuh ya!”
Out of context, a Brexit sounds delicious.
It’s just stargazy pie topped with pig taints and Nutella.
…..i’ll just have the tikka misala.
A hundred times yes.
I like the Paddington movies but I don’t quite love them. I’m broken inside.
Highest rated film in RT history and it’s still somehow underrated. That bear will be the death of us all.
excited to see this director’s take on Willy Wonka, especially since Donald Glover is angling hard for the titular role.
It is better than all the Oscar nominated movies this year except The Favourite (and maybe Roma). It was basically perfect. The only knock may be that the movie borrows too much visually from Wes Andersons movies, but it works in the film so who cares, really.
The pop up book scene with his aunt visiting London is perfection. Wes Anderson wishes he thought of that.
I have only vague memories of Paddington Bear – my eldest brother was a huge fan though – and honestly if you’d told me a movie, two in fact, about his adventures would be acclaimed by critics and audiences and rake in big money, rather than a cheap thrown-together cash grab based on cheap licensing rights and some old executive’s delusion about what the kids are into, I would have assumed you were high.