There are no brown bears in South America
I'm just sayin'. Looking forward to this movie, loved the animated series as a kid.
http://manlymovie.freeforums.net/-WOW what a site!
No, but there are spectacled bears. Michael Bond just made Paddington a brown bear because it was cuter, I guess. (And maybe because Paddington's adopted surname is Brown.)
Bond was originally going with "darkest Africa" for Paddington's origin, until someone pointed out to him that there are no bears in Africa. So he went with South America since it was the home of the spectacled bear.
It's probably just as well that he did. Given that there are actually people out there who read slavery/racism allegories into Curious George and King Kong, having Paddington come from Africa might have opened up a can of worms among the "offensensitive."
He could be a rare color phase of the spectacled bears. Just like The Golden Moon bear is a rare color phase of the Asiatic black bear and black panthers are a color phase of leopards and jaguars
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