The first official teaser trailer for the movie Paddington arrived via Yahoo yesterday. The actual movie is a ways off — it debuts on December 12.

Colin Firth is the voice of the animated bear. Playing live-action characters, Mrs. and Mrs. Brown, are Hugh Bonneville (known to Americans primarily as Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey), and Sally Hawkins, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Blue Jasmine. Nicole Kidman plays the evil taxidermist, bent on adding the bear to her collection. The producer is David Heyman, who, as the trailer proclaims, was the producer of the Harry Potter series  The company handling the special effects, Framestone, won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Gravity.

The Paddington Bear series began in 1958 with A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. It will be reissued in July by HarperCollins with illustrations by R.W. Alley (Peggy Fortnum illustrated the original books) and the shortened movie title of simply Paddington. The movie tie-in arrives on Nov. 4.

Baby Gap is also featuring tie-ins in the form of a clothing line.

Official Movie Site: Paddington.com

The trailer shows the UK’s Nov 28 release date; the movie opens here on Dec. 12

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2014 at 9:01 am and is filed under Books & Movies, Childrens and YA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.