Prepare the servants and get your upper-lip-stiffening exercises ready, because Downton Abbey is coming back. Vulture reports that, after years of negotiations, planning, and what we can only assume was an extremely British set of befuddlements and shenanigans, a film version of the beloved period soap has been green-lit by NBC Universal.
The movie is set to start filming next year, and will apparently focus on roughly 20 of the show’s characters. (Which means we might need another world war, or at least a batch of narratively convenient car crashes, to winnow out the herd.) It also sounds like at least some of the main members of the cast hadn’t been notified that plans for a movie were moving forward; Laura Carmichael, who played Lady Edith on the series, told The Associated Press, “Well, tell my agent, because we’re still waiting to know. We’re hoping that will happen soon.” (To be fair, it would just be so Edith to get left out of the movie.)