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Will Hugh Grant Star In Bridget Jones 4?

2 months ago

The fourth film is finally happening

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Romcom fans, rejoice: the fourth Bridget Jones film, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, is officially happening – and, as you might expect, it boasts a star-studded cast. Here’s everything we know so far.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy: Plot, Cast, Release Date

What Will Happen In Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy?

Taking place four years after the previous film (Bridget Jones’s Baby), Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy will reunite us with a 51 year-old Bridget, now a widow raising her two small children following the untimely death of her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth’s character in the earlier movies).

While it’s been revealed that the series author Helen Fielding herself penned the screenplay, not much has been confirmed about the plot of the film so far. However, we can assume that it will at least partly reflect the book, which sees Bridget navigating life in her fifties, juggling both single motherhood and modern dating.

Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. (Universal Studios/Studio Canal/Miramax Film Corp)

Will Hugh Grant Star In Bridget Jones 4?

Yes, Hugh Grant will return as the dashing Daniel Cleaver, alongside Renée Zellweger as Bridget. The news comes after he didn’t appear in Bridget Jones’s Baby, and the star recently shared on The Graham Norton Show he felt there was ‘absolutely not role’ for Daniel in the fourth film either – ‘but they wanted to cram me in,’ he says.

Upon reading the script, Grant shared, ‘I felt that what they proposed was fine, but not great. And I felt that he [Daniel] needed a third dimension. He’s in his 60s now, you can’t just have him smoothing his way down King’s Road eyeing up young girls. Something needs to have happened to him in the interim’ In the end, Grant adjusted the plot himself. ‘We invented a rather good – I invented a rather good – interim story.

‘It’s actually a very good and moving script,’ he added. ‘And I say that as someone who’s horrid about scripts. This was brilliant.’

Is It Based On A Book?

Yes, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is based on the third novel in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series, which was published in 2013. In the books, Mad About The Boy follows The Edge of Reason; the third film, Bridget Jones’s Baby, was based on columns Fielding wrote for The Independent.

Grant also shared on The Graham Norton Show that the film’s plot is ‘very, very sad’ – and it is based on author Fielding’s real-life tragedy. ‘She had a sad story,’ Grant shared. ‘She got married to an American screenwriter, she had children and then he died.’ Fielding started writing a novel based on her experiences, before realising her protagonist was a lot like Bridget – so she turned it into a Bridget Jones book. ‘And as well as being very funny, it’s very, very sad,’ Grant commented.

Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

The Full Cast Of Bridget Jones 4

Alongside Zellweger and Grant, The White Lotus and One Day star Leo Woodall will star as the titular ‘boy’: Bridget’s new, younger love interest. The full cast includes: