The Crawley family returns to say farewell in the first trailer for Downton Abbey: The Grande Finale, which will be released in theaters on Sept. 12. The film, which stars Simon Russell Beale, Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Michael Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Paul Giamatti, and others, catches the family at the start of the 1930s, positioning the new decade as a clean slate.
“The place we’ll always remember. The family we’ll never forget. Everything has led to this,” the film’s logline reads. The Grande Finale catches up the series’ characters following 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era, the 2019 film Downton Abbey, and the original hit TV series, which ran between 2010 and 2015. The film marks the first not to feature Maggie Smith, whose character, Violet, died at the end of A New Era prior to her own death in September 2024.
The Grande Finale will feature appearances from Jim Carter, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol, Alessandro Nivola, Dominic West, Penelope Wilton, Arty Froushan, Joely Richardson, Paul Copley, and Douglas Reith. Franchise creator Julian Fellowes returned to write the script with Simon Curtis returning as director.
“It’s the third and final movie, and we started filming the first season 15 years ago. So it was super emotional,” Froggatt told MovieWeb earlier this year. “You don’t get to do that very often in this industry, and the fact that I’ve shared it with such a wonderful group of people will always be really special. It’ll always have a special place in my heart, and it’s been a special part of my life.”
Last year, Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame detailed plans to honor Smith in the final film as a continuation of the mourning the characters will express over her character. “The fact that Dame Maggie herself has now passed away since that time, I do think, has given a real added poignancy to a story that we would have planned anyway,” Neame told TVLine. “The loss of the Dowager, it now feels far more significant that you see actors playing characters mourning the family matriarch. But I also see actors mourning the matriarch of the show, and it feels more genuine and more meaningful.”
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