Full of Paddington’s signature blend of wit, charm, and laugh-out-loud humor, Paddington in Peru finds the beloved, marmalade-loving bear lost in the jungle on an exciting, high-stakes adventure.
When Paddington discovers his beloved Aunt Lucy has gone missing from the Home for Retired Bears, he and the Brown family head to the wilds of Peru to look for her, the only clue to her whereabouts a spot marked on an enigmatic map. Determined to solve the mystery, Paddington embarks on a thrilling quest through the rainforests of the Amazon to find his aunt…and may also uncover one of the world’s most legendary treasures.
Back on the big screen and delighting audiences over the holiday season, director Dougal Wilson has crafted magic with this anticipated – and acclaimed – family sequel; you can read our full review here. And as the film continues to warm the hearts of families the globe over, Peter Gray spoke with the first-time feature length filmmaker during his visit to Australia, discussing how he felt stepping into a proven, beloved franchise, how important it was to honour Peru from a cultural perspective, and the technical wizardry taken on to bring the marmalade-loving bear to life.
Going into feature length is a big task in itself, but then you’re coming into a franchise as universally beloved as Paddington. What was it about Paddington in Peru that made you want to take the leap as your first feature film as a director?
Well, it was very terrifying. I didn’t imagine it would be the leap I would take. I was coming from a short-form background. Music videos and commercials and short films, that sort of thing. I was in the process of developing something else, but then this opportunity came up, and I had really admired what Paul King did with the first two films. I thought they were so smart. And I loved the tone. I thought it was quite uniquely British. They were just very intelligently made for family films. But you don’t have to be a young person to enjoy them. They can be enjoyed on so many levels. I really admired (Paul’s style). Visually, they were done really well.
When I got the call that Paul was busy doing Wonka, and they needed someone to do number 3, I was a bit taken aback. Like I said, it was unexpected. It wasn’t something I’d been plotting or planning to do, so it was just an opportunity that arrived. I think they thought my short style could pertain to Paddington, which was very flattering, but at the same time it was absolutely terrifying. As you said, it’s a completely beloved franchise. The first two films are fantastically done. The second one has sort of become this legendarily well reviewed film. It was a great opportunity, but I was under no illusion of how difficult it would be to continue in the same vein of similar quality. It was terrifying, actually. But I felt like I couldn’t turn the opportunity down. I knew I would regret it if I did.
In some ways, is it almost like now that you’ve gone into the third of a franchise, with the previous two so-well received, as has this one, do you feel as if anything you do from now on is almost easier because you’ve done the hardest thing first?
(Laughs) That’s funny. The reason I’m in Australia is because I’m doing a Telstra commercial, and they’ve been like fun, little films. And, yeah, when I was doing (Paddington in Peru), I thought of it as doing the equivalent of, like, 100 commercials. I’m quite fastidious with my storyboards, and being absolutely exact about things. That’s what the approach was here. When you go from short form to long form, you’re inundated with so much granular detail.
If I’m ever allowed to do another film, and I’ll have to see if this one makes its money back, I would never presume it’ll get any easier. The audience knows if care has been put into it. This experience has been great, and I’ll know what I’m getting into a bit more next time. I don’t anticipate I’ll do something as established as a franchise (sequel) next time. I might try and make the thing I was working on before Paddington came along. We’ll see.
Peru as a setting holds such emotional weight for Paddington, as well as just being a visually stunning setting on its own. How did you find balancing the relationship of Paddington’s birthplace with the production team of bringing Peru to life on screen?
Well I went to Peru in 2022 to research, and I ended yup staying. The production got pushed back a bit, so I ended up staying in South America for two months. I was there with the location manager, the production designer and the producer for three and a half weeks, but then I just was on my own for the rest of the time, just going around. I really tried to get under the skin of Peru. I tried to see as much as I could. I went to the rainforest in Puerto Maldonado. I went to the Nazca Lines. I went to Cusco. I went to the top of Machu Picchu twice. I’m not that well traveled, but I’ve never been to any other place that has such a variety of environments within one country. It’s not just jungles and deserts. I saw a lot of rainforests and enormously high mountains. I wanted to be as respectful to Peru as possible.
You know, the film is a family adventure, and that comes with a lot of familiar tropes, but I was trying with my research to bring in as much Peruvian culture as possible, in terms of the design and the fabrics and the architecture. We had so many photographs when we got back. The original plan was to shoot in Peru, to take the actors out there, but it just proved prohibitively expensive to take the main unit. So what we did was shot the water and mountain stuff in Colombia, because it was easier to get to these steep sided rivers there. We shot lots of background stuff in Machu Picchu, and in London we had the main unit stuff, and just composited with background. We had a great VFX Supervisor who composited it really beautifully. So, technically and culturally it was a challenge. I don’t know if that answered your question (laughs).
With the setting, so much of the humour of these films comes from the visual gags. And, obviously, really clever writing. Are you able to walk me through the process of crafting one of your favourite moments?
Oh, gosh, well, London played such a big part in the first two films. It’s almost a character in the film itself. And it’s so distinctive. When I received the script for this film, it was already called Paddington in Peru, so I had to think how is this going to work in Peru? Obviously, there’s a bit of Peru in the first two films, but it’s not a whole story. When we were storyboarding and writing, and I collaborated with the writers developing the script for a bit, we really tried to bring the visual tone from the first two films and apply it to this third film.
For example, there’s an action sequence where Paddington attempts to drive the boat and, you know, it doesn’t go well. The boat ends up getting smashed up and sinking. Not really a spoiler alert, (because) it’s pretty predictable. If Paddington tries to drive a boat, something bad is going to happen. So that was a really fun sequence to work out, to get him tied to the ship’s wheel, and then set it all to music from the player piano, which provides this musical accompaniment. And we set it to the “Blue Danube”, which was sort of take on 2001: A Space Odyssey. And those ruins just felt to me like a really, really fun, playful labyrinth. To have a great fun play chasing. And we brought in homages to previous action films or comedy films, like the boulder is an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the wall is a reference to Steamboat Bill Jr, the Buster Keaton movie.
Despite the fact we’re in a place that isn’t London, we were trying to apply the same rules. To make parts of Peru like a London-ish environment. I love the way Paul constructed his action sequences in Paddington 2, so it was trying to apply that to our environments, even if it doesn’t make any sense at all.
Well, it definitely worked. Much like London in the first two, Peru was an extension of that. On the mention of Paddington, you have the delightful Ben Whishaw voicing him. What’s that filming process like? Is he separate from much of the shoot? And how did you find directing the voice acting compared to the physicality on set?
He’s a whole process. Luckily, it had been highly established by the team with the first two films, so I definitely got a lot of help with the way it works. We have the script and the scenes…for example, there’s the scene where The Browns come into The Reverend Mother’s office, and Reverend Mother explains that Paddington’s Aunt Lucy has gone missing. We have the scene with the humans, and we actually have a small person actor called Lauren Bertrand, who’s fantastic, and she’s been in the first two films. She dressed like Paddington. She has the coat and the hat. We walk through the scene, and herself and the Brown family, and Olivia Colman, we block it out, and we then rehearse it like Paddington is real. Off screen, there’s someone who sounds a bit like Ben, but it isn’t Ben, but he reads the lines out. Lauren he even lip syncs the lines, so after a while you get really used to it. It feels like Paddington is there.
It really helps establish all the eye lines, and it helps is get the framings right. We’ll then shoot that, and we’ll take Lauren away so we have a background. I’m giving away all the magic now (laughs). During the edits, we go and get Ben and then start a whole other process, which is more the nuances of the actual animation. We record Ben doing that scene and we’ll have a lot of voice sessions with Ben, and he brings so much to it. We even film Ben’s face. It isn’t motion capture, but we have a helmet cam, and it’s a way to get the details of his demeanor and the expressiveness of Paddington’s face. He emotes a lot.
Then the animators will start animating each shot, but we also film Ben’s whole body. We do other sessions where we take Ben to the basement at the post-production company, and we film him doing actual physical stuff. He’s brilliant at that. He often comes up with little ideas that we wouldn’t have thought of just on the day. We have another performer for the more kinetic, slapstick sequences. There’s a Spanish performer, who’s basically a clown, called Javier Mazan, and he was actually in the first Paddington as the friendly guard who gives Paddington his hat with all the sandwiches inside. He knows how to do slapstick. It becomes more emotional when Ben gets involved.
Ben really gives the film such an emotionality. But next to Ben, you have Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman here. These films just attract such massive talent. When you have these actors doing these types of roles, can they ever go too big? Is there such a thing as too theatrical for a Paddington movie?
I mean, it was a bit intimidating for me, because it’s my first feature and I’m attempting to tell Antonio Banderas and Olivia Colman what to do. They have a grip on their character, and I know they’ll deliver these amazing performances, but we will try alternative (takes), and sometimes the bigger is better for certain scenes. There’s a scene in the film where Olivia Colman, and it’s sort of our little homage to The Sound of Music, because we have her as a singing nun, but I did tell her not to be afraid to be too big in this scene. It just felt like it would work. But then there are other scenes where her actor instinct is absolutely right and she’ll reign it right in. Yes, there’s some silly bits, but these films do have very sincere and earnest emotional moments as well. I mean, Antonio Banderas was clowning about to no end on certain scenes, and then he has to deal with his ancestral demons, and we had to play it really straight. There’s a bunch of ranges in the colour of these performances, but these actors were great in helping me with that.
Well, you got amazing performances out of everyone. It feels very cohesive with the Paddington films. I was excited for a third Paddington, and the wait was so long, so it’s so awesome to see it doing so well. And it absolutely deserves to. Thank you for bringing it to life.
Thank you so much, thank you for saying that. That’s great.
Paddington in Peru is now screening in Australian theatres. It will be released in theatres in the United States on February 14th, 2025.
