Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant are ready to be very busy and important once again.
The duo are set to return for a fourth installment in the Bridget Jones franchise, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. While Grant was absent from the third film—2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby—he’ll be reprising his role as womanizer Daniel Cleaver.
Emma Thompson will also be back after her turn as Dr. Rawlings in the third film (she also served as one of the screenwriters), alongside newcomers Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall, although there is no word yet on who they will be playing.
Based on the third book in Helen Fielding‘s series, Mad About the Boy finds Bridget in her early 50s and follows her life as a single mother. The movie is set to debut in theaters internationally and on Peacock in the U.S. on Valentine’s Day 2025.
The first film in the series, Bridget Jones’s Diary, made a splash in 2001 as it followed reporter Bridget on her quest to improve herself and find love. A sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was released in 2004.
“It’s so much fun,” she told Vanity Fair in 2020. “Man, I’d love the experience of revisiting her. I love her. I just think she’s so much fun. She’s the best.”
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images; Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images for Warner Bros.And while the 54-year-old has now become synonymous with the character, there was some skepticism when she was cast—even from her costar Grant.
“There was a whole scandal about why isn’t this a British actress,” 63-year-old Grant said in the 2020 documentary Being Bridget Jones. “I didn’t know Renée Zellweger, and a Texan playing a British character, it did seem like a stretch.”
“Then she came in and it was Princess Margaret having had a stroke,” he joked. “But a week later it was a bang on.”
