'Bridget Jones 4' Goes Straight To Streaming for Valentine's Day

The Bridget Jones's Diary film, adapted from the beloved novel, launched a trilogy of blockbuster films. The romantic comedy was one of the leading British films, but it wasn't a science fiction/fantasy film of the early 2000s. Released in 2001, the initial movie made American actor Renee Zellweger, who starred as the titular Jones, a household name, and was followed by Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 2004. The third film fell into development hell as the rom-com genre collapsed in 2009/2010, but when rom-coms resurged in the latter half of the decade, Bridget Jones's Baby was one of the first in line to get back in the theater. Now, a fourth film, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, brings it back for another decade.

Despite Zellweger returning along with most of the original cast, many of who are now far higher profile than they were 25 years ago, the film will not risk becoming a box office bomb as fewer and fewer older women go out to the theater. Instead, it will aim to be the streaming movie of choice this Valentine's Day, hoping that all those single women who spend Valentine's Day much like Jones usually does (alone, on the couch, drinking wine, and eating chocolates they bought for themselves half-price on the way home) will open the Peacock app for one last hurrah with an icon who managed to marry her Mr. Darcy.

Not that Jones will be an old-married when she returns, despite having had a baby or two. While the character of Mark Darcy reportedly will cameo, it will only be long enough to leave our heroine a widow, suddenly forced to face the newest 21st-century dating rituals.