Full Trailer For ‘Paddington 2’ With Ben Whishaw & Hugh Grant

Early word on 2014’s “Paddington” was tentative at best. The live-action/CGI revival of the iconic British children’s character, created by Michael Bond (who passed away sadly this year) gave off a slight early whiff of “Garfield” or “Marmaduke,” had a rather unpromising early trailer, and even spawned the Creepy Paddington meme in advance of its release.

But when Paul King‘s film arrived, it proved to be a delight: a near-Pixar level of family entertainment with big laughs, a gigantic heart, real cinematic magic, and an utterly vital message about refugees. And it was a big hit as well — taking nearly $250 million worldwide, and $75 million in the U.S. alone (giving The Weinstein Company a much-needed home-run. Which means that the upcoming sequel, “Paddington 2,” has a tough act to follow.

Fortunately, the sequel looks to be not fixing what wasn’t broken, with much of the same creative team returning — King again directs, from a script by himself and “Mindhorn” co-writer Simon Farnaby, and the majority of the cast are returning, with Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Peter Capaldi, Imelda Staunton, Jim Broadbent, Samuel Joslin, Madeleine Harris and, as the voice of the marmalade-loving bear, Ben Whishaw all back for more.

This time, as the full trailer that just debuted reveals, they’re joined by Hugh Grant, who steps into Nicole Kidman’s shoes as the villain of the piece, a faded actor, cat burglar and master-of-disguise called Phoenix Buchanan, while Brendan Gleeson, Noah Taylor, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Tom Davis, Jamie Demetriou and Robbie Gee also join the fun. It looks like a worthy follow-up to us: we’ll find out for sure when the movie opens in the UK on November 10th, or on January 12th in the U.S. Watch the trailer, with the new poster, below.