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‘Downton Abbey’ Movie Set 18 Months After Original Series

“Life is settling into these new realities when this event happens at Downton that brings everybody together,” director Michael Engler tells EW

| December 20, 2018 @ 9:12 AM
Downton Abbey Season 6

PBS

“Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler detailed some new specifics about the plot of the new “Downton Abbey” movie arriving in September.

Along with several first look images, Entertainment Weekly reports that the story for the new film takes place 18 months after the conclusion of the original series, which ended on New Year’s Eve in 1926. The new film picks up with the Crawleys in the autumn of 1927.

Mary (Michelle Dockery) and her sister Edith (Laura Carmichael) are both settling into married life, Tom Branson (Allan Leech) is still running his automobile business and adjusting best to the changes in the culture in the late 1920s, and butler Carson (Jim Carter) is finding himself in greater health since being forced into retirement at the end of the series.

Also Read: 'Downton Abbey' Movie Teaser Features Return to Sumptuous Estate (Video)

“Life is settling into these new realities when this event happens at Downton that brings everybody together,” Engler told EW. “The story line has expanded the scale of it. It takes the things you love about Downton – the romance, the intrigue, the pageantry – and makes it bigger.”

The cast and crew promises that the new film will be much more of the same of the original series but on a “grander scale.” They also addressed the challenges of taking the sprawling stories of 20 plus characters spread out across a season of television and making all their stories fit into a two hour film.

“The minute we read it, already the story had gained in scale and in size so much, and Julian’s done a very clever thing … Everyone has to come together and combine as a household for the story,” Leech told EW.

“Downton Abbey” ended in 2016, and the film will arrive in theaters first in the U.K. on Sept. 13, 2019, followed by a U.S. release one week later. See the new images via EW below:

Downton Abbey Movie

EW

Downton Abbey Movie

EW

Downton Abbey Movie

EW

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  • The very first trailer for "Avengers: Endgame" is now out, and surely you all have seen it by now if you're reading this. It's not super heavy on detail, which is to be expected this far out, but there are still details we can glean about the plot of this crazy thing. So let's do dive in. 1. Tony Stark is adrift in space in the Guardians' ship All of the first minute of the trailer is spent with Tony Stark, who is adrift in space in the Milano seemingly about to run out of food and air. Tony is recording a goodbye message to Pepper Potts. It seems likely this could be the very beginning of "Avengers: Endgame," with a rescue to mirror Thanos' attack on the Asgardians in "Avengers: Infinity War." The question is: who's doing the rescuing? Could Captain Marvel show up on the stage that early in this? 2. Nebula is with him Nebula was the only other survivor from Titan, and I guess the ship that she rammed into Thanos during the big battle in "Infinity War" wasn't fit to fly after she wrecked it.Of course, if Nebula is with Tony, why wouldn't they be able to get anywhere? She would know how to fly the Milano, you would think. Hmmm. 2. Thanos is still wearing the burned up Infinity Gauntlet We get a brief look at Thanos on that planet he retired to after doing mass murder on a scale hitherto undreamt of. He's set up his armor as a scarecrow, and he's still wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. We know it's not completely broken -- we saw him use the burnt-out gauntlet to teleport out of Wakanda at the end of the battle there. But is there a reason he's still wearing it? Maybe he knows that the Avengers will need it if they wanna undo what he did? That's how it goes in the comics, anyway. 3. They know Spider-Man got dusted There's a shot in Avengers HQ with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) looking at two pictures and crying. The pictures are of Scott Lang and Peter Parker. Presumably this means the Avengers think they both got dusted. That makes sense for Scott, since he really did disappear at the time of the snap as he was in the Quantum Realm at the time. But they would have known Peter went to space with Tony Stark in pursuit of the Black Order. Of course, there's a pile of other questions this item inspires. Like: Could that scene happen after Tony is back on Earth? Do any of the other Avengers even know Spider-Man's secret identity? I guess Pepper or Happy could have told them, presuming they survived. Anyway, this is an interesting nugget, at least. 3. Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) is now Ronin 4. The surviving Avengers on Earth have a plan 5. Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man) is out of the Quantum Realm Marvel Studios
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