Bridget Jones’s dating app – new film enters the social media age
BRIDGET JONES is returning to the silver screen as a midlifer with a new film in the making this spring.
Renée Zellweger, the double Oscar-winning actress best known for playing the chaotic thirtysomething everywoman, is set to begin working on a fourth instalment of the best-selling series in May, The Mail on Sunday reported.
The film is to be based on Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which explores Jones as a 51-year-old single mother to two children in an era of social media and dating apps.
A source told the newspaper: “Bridget is back and is about to take over London. Filming is being mapped out already and all of the preproduction is in place.”
Zellweger, 54, is said to be “excited” about reviving the British icon.
“She adores the character so much,” the source said.
They added: “Bridget Jones fever is expected to sweep across London this spring.”
Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, who played love rivals Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver in the previous films, are also expected to make a return.
It comes eight years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, which ended with Zellweger’s character marrying the high-flying lawyer Darcy and discovering he was the father to her child.
Rumours last year suggested that a fourth film had been axed because of the Hollywood actors’ strikes, with Fielding saying every film that gets made is a “miracle”.
She previously told Radio Times: “I think it’s really difficult to make films and to make them happen and to make them good and we want it to be really good. But I really hope so. I’d love to see it on the screen.”
Texas-born Zellweger is said to be looking for somewhere to live in London with her boyfriend, the TV presenter and former Hertfordshire policeman Ant Anstead, while she is working on the project.
She rented an apartment in Kensington, west London, while filming previously, where she would often go unnoticed in the local shops.
Bridget Jones has become a global box office sensation since the first movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was released in 2001 and grossed £222million.
The latest instalment, which came out in 2016, also broke UK box office records, bagging £8.11million in its opening weekend – the largest sum for any September opening and the record for a romantic comedy.