Please Look After This Bear – Paddington Set To Receive The Film Treatment

Some childhood memories resonate more than others, for me it’s a certain blue duffel coat my mother forced me to wear between the ages of five and eight (you’ll grow into it she said, I never did).  The only thing that kept me going through those dark days was Paddington Bear, a singular creation from Michael Bond who also happened to wear a blue duffel coat.  So it’s with great delight, and not a little nostalgia, that we can announce today that Paddington Bear is finally getting his own film.  Yes the denizen of darkest peru, and 32 Windsor Gardens, is about to turn CGI courtesy of Studiocanal and Harry Potter producer David Heyman.

Variety are describing it as a ‘passion project’ for Heyman who has clearly been a fan since his own childhood, in fact this is what he had to say on the project:

Paddington Bear is a universally loved character, treasured for his optimism, his sense of fair play and his perfect manners — and of course for his unintentional talent for comic chaos….Michael Bond’s books offer such wit and wonder, and I am so delighted at this chance to bring Paddington to the big screen

Universally loved couldn’t be a more apt description, the wandering bear has sold over 35 million copies since his creation in 1958.  The project is being touted as a ‘modern take on Paddington’, usually a phrase that inspires dread in all who hear it, however when you throw in The Mighty Boosh alumni Paul King as a director it becomes a phrase laden with hope.  Studiocanal, David Heyman and Paul King have certainly got a job on their hands if they want to suceed in translating Paddington to the big screen to the satisfaction of those millions of fans, I for one desperately hope they succeed.

Source: Deadline