The 'Downton Abbey' Movie Reviews Suggest The Crawleys Just Might Be A Hit

Early Downton Abbey movie reviews are rolling in, and critics and fans alike seem to love the Crawley family's big screen debut.

Downton Abbey was a surprise hit when it first came out in 2010. The original seven episodes were originally conceived as a miniseries, where the events of the late Edwardian era spread over a two year period. Our guides were the Earl of Grantham and his family, and the events dipped in and out of time, flashes of the lives of the idle rich before the Great War swept them away. But then ITV declared there would be a second season after the first one did so well. Moreover, the slightly truncated PBS version (condensed into five slightly longer episodes) turned out to be the biggest hit for public television since the original 1970s era Poldark.

Now the film seems to be beating these same odds. The first weekend in the U.K. not only overthrew IT Chapter Two, to rake in $12 million at the top of the box office pile, but ticket pre-sales in the U.S. have beaten out those for Quentin Tarantino's highly-anticipated Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Now the movie has rung in at a surprisingly high 81% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its U.S. debut.