The first Bridget Jones film, Bridget Jones’s Diary, is so good. It’s everything you want from a romantic comedy – it’s genuinely funny, it’s comforting, it’s delightfully weird in some places, and it has an extremely likable heroine and a very good Mr. Darcy. The second film – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – was not particularly good but still somewhat enjoyable, and they mostly kept to the source material (Helen Fielding’s second book). The wheels well and truly came off for the third film, Bridget Jones’s Baby, in which Bridget tried to choose between Patrick Dempsey and Colin Firth… all while she was close to 50 years old and pregnant. It was a complete mess and it should have killed the franchise. I thought it did! And then we started hearing rumors about a fourth Bridget Jones movie in the works. Well, it turns out that Renee Zellweger is still interested in milking this dead-and-buried franchise, because she’s officially signed on. It will be an adaptation of Fielding’s Mad About the Boy.

Renée Zellweger (Judy) has closed a deal to reprise the role that brought her her first Oscar nomination in Universal Pictures and Working Title’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Deadline has learned.

Others set to return in the film, from director Michael Morris (To Leslie), include Hugh Grant (Wonka) and Emma Thompson (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande). Newcomers to the cast will include Chiwetel Ejiofor (Rob Peace) and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus).

Based on the third book in Fielding’s series, Mad About the Boy picks up with Bridget in her early fifties, as she navigates the challenges of modern life while juggling the responsibilities of motherhood. No word yet as to who Ejiofor and Woodall will be playing.

[From Deadline]

I’m sad to report that I have read Mad About the Boy and I think I know which characters Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor are playing. While it will be cute to see Chiwetel as a traditional romantic lead, I wish it was not in a Bridget Jones movie! My God. Leo is definitely being cast as the much-younger man she dates for a few months, right?

Major Spoilers: if we’re going with the Bridget Jones Cinematic Universe, I would assume that Mark Darcy and Bridget get married after she gives birth to their son (at the end of Bridget Jones’s Baby) and then the fourth film will pick up using Mad About the Boy as the source material – the book picks up about a year or two after Mark Darcy’s death. That’s why Colin Firth isn’t “returning” to the franchise – because Helen Fielding killed him off in the book, which is all about Bridget getting back into the dating scene (and as always, losing weight) as a widowed single mother.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.