‘Downton Abbey’ First Movie Trailer Released

The first full-length trailer for the Downton Abbey feature film dropped Tuesday morning, showing the Crawleys play host to a royal guest in their return to the screen.

King George V himself drops in on the family and everyone is on hand for the occasion, including Jim Carter as butler Charles Carson coming out of retirement. The trailer finds Lady Mary, who has modernized her hair with a sleek new bob, appealing to him to return to the family estate; before long, he’s seen strolling up the estate’s long, familiar pathway.

Fans of Maggie Smith will be delighted to see that Dowager Countess has a few quips in store as well. “Do you have enough cliches to get through the visit?” she asks, true to character.

Meanwhile, Mary and her sister Edith are both settling into married life, while Tom Branson is still running his automobile business and adjusting best to the changes in the culture in the late 1920s.

In addition to Smith, stars like Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Allen Leech, Laura Carmichael, Michelle Dockery, Joanne Froggatt, Matthew Goode and Michael Fox also make appearances in the trailer.

Joining the cast of the feature film are Geraldine James, Imelda Staunton, Simon Jones, David Haig, Tuppence Middleton, Kate Phillips and Stephen Campbell Moore.

Julian Fellowes, who served as showrunner for the series, returned to write the screenplay for the film. It’s still set in the 1920s heydays, but the film takes place in 1927, which is 18 months after the events of the original series, which ended on New Year’s Eve 1926.

The official poster for the film debuted on the official Downton Abbey Twitter account Monday, sporting the tagline: “We’ve been expecting you.”

The film is directed by Brian Percival (The Book Thief, About a Girl), who directed six episodes of Downton Abbey, including its two-hour series finale back in 2015. Carnival Films is producing with Gareth Neame as executive producer, and Focus Features is releasing the film.

“Since the series ended, fans of Downton have long been waiting for the Crawley family’s next chapter,” Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski previously said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to join this incredible group of filmmakers, actors and craftspeople, led by Julian Fellowes and Gareth Neame, in bringing back the world of Downton to the big screen next September.”

Downton Abbey hits theaters in the U.K. on Sept. 13, followed a week later on Sept. 20 in the U.S.