'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.

Here's the film synopsis:

The film picks up with Bridget in her early 50s, again finding her alone. Widowed four years ago, when Mark was killed on a humanitarian mission in Sudan, she’s now a single mother to nine-year-old Billy and four-year-old Mabel and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver.

Pressured by her Urban Family —Shazzer, Jude, and Tom, her work colleague Miranda, her mother, and her gynecologist Dr. Rawlings — to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work. She even tries dating apps, where a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man soon pursues her. Now juggling work, home, and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with his father's absence, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher.

Zellweger will be rejoined by previous co-stars Colin Firth (Lockerbie) as Mark Darcy, Emma Thompson (Down Cemetery Road) as Dr. Rawlings, Hugh Grant (The Gentlemen) as Daniel Cleaver, Gemma Jones (Gentleman Jack) as Mama Pamela Jones, Jim Broadbent (My Lady Jane) as Papa Colin Jones, Celia Imrie (The Thursday Murder Club) as Una Alconbury, Neil Pearson (Silent Witness) as Richard Finch, Joanna Scanlan (The Larkins) as Cathy in Makeup, and Sarah Solemani (Ridley Road) as BFF Miranda, plus Sally Phillips (Vanity Fair), Shirley Henderson (Tom Jones), and James Callis (Slow Horses) as Shazzer, Jude, and Tom. 

Newcomers for the fourth film include Leo Woodall (Prime Target), Chiwetel Ejiofor (The Man Who Fell To Earth), Josette Simon (Anatomy of a Scandal), Nico Parker (The Last of Us), Leila Farzad (I Hate Suzie), and Isla Fisher (Playdate).

Author Helen Fielding, who wrote the Bridget Jones novels on which the movies are based, penned the script, with contributions from Abi Morgan and Dan Mazer. Michael Morris (To Leslie) directed, Fielding and Zellweger executive produce with Amelia Granger & Sarah-Jane Wright for Working Title Films. 

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy premieres on Peacock on Friday, February 13, 2024.