Colin Firth gave voice to a king. Soon he’ll do the same for a bear.
Paddington, that is, the Peruvian bear who has been the hero of 70 books that have sold more than 30 million copies and who will get his big-screen debut Dec. 12.
Firth, who won an Oscar for playing the stuttering King George VI in 2010’s “The King’s Speech,” will provide the voice of the Brit-loving bear. The live-action “Paddington” also stars Sally Hawkins as the sweet Mrs. Mary Brown and Nicole Kidman as the evil taxidermist Millicent.
Director Paul King, making his feature film debut, concedes he dreamed big when adapting the story of a bear who finds himself lost in London’s Paddington Station with nothing more than a floppy hat and a battered suitcase.
“What’s great about Paddington is he’s an outsider trying to fit into a new world,” King says. “It’s an immigrant story. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was looking at movies like “The Godfather II” and “Oliver Twist,” at great stories about a small person coming to a big new world.”
It doesn’t sound so ridiculous, considering author Michael Bond wrote the first of more than 20 Paddington books in 1958, and the series has become a juggernaut in the children’s book world, having been translated into at least 30 languages.
“A character this established keeps me up at night,” King says of tackling an icon. “Terror is the best word to describe it. I was extremely apprehensive because you want to do the right thing by the author.”
King even visited the 88-year-old Bond to brainstorm ideas to flesh out a feature film from the stories, which are often exercises in eloquent brevity.
“When we visited with (Bond), he said, ‘So you’re going try to write a 90-minute film? Good luck with that,’” King recalls.
But King, who wrote the screenplay, spent five years on the script, which will include mainstay characters from the books such as Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters), Mr. Gruber (Jim Broadbent) and Mr. Curry (Peter Capaldi).
King says he considers Paddington’s story to be “pretty universal. We’ve all been to school for the first time, or left home, and it’s a nerve-racking moment in your life.”
Not that Paddington will lose what King calls the books’ “tremendous warmth. Paddington’s world is not a cruel place. The characters have a lot of love to them. He’s just in a big world he doesn’t understand.”
King says he “tried to make a London where a talking animal isn’t so unnatural. We certainly watched movies like “Stuart Little” and “Babe” and the Pixar movies (for their) storytelling, heart and comedy.”
And “The King’s Speech” for its hero.
“He sounds quite like a bear,” King says of Firth. “His voice can be deep and growly, if you listen to him without noticing how devilishly handsome he is. You can put him in a duffle coat and a big hat and he still looks cool.”
