Renée Zellweger is coming back for a new ‘Bridget Jones’ sequel

If you loved Renée Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’ Diary” and its sequels, mark your calendar for next Valentine’s Day. Universal Pictures made legions of rom-com fans happy this week with the announcement that Zellweger will be reprising the title role of the awkward but lovable Londoner for “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” in 2025.

The movie will be the third sequel to “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” the film that got Zellweger her first Oscar nomination back in 2002. In the first film, she played an English thirty-something whose vows to get her life together are sidetracked by the romantic attentions of barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).

Grant’s performance here was a high-water mark in his heartthrob era, and Universal reports that he’ll be returning for this latest sequel. This would mark his third time playing Cleaver in the Bridget Jones movies — four, if you count his numerous mentions in 2016’s “Bridget Jones’ Baby,” where his character has supposedly died in a plane crash. (Spoiler alert: he has not.)

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Also set to return is Emma Thompson, who stole a few scenes as Dr. Rawlings in “Bridget Jones’ Baby,” a film that she co-wrote. Other cast members include Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) and Leo Woodall, probably best known for his turn as Jack in season two of “The White Lotus.”

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” will be based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Bridget Jones’ creator, Helen Fielding. In it, Jones’ embarrassing escapades aren’t confined to her diary. She’s texting, tweeting and fumbling through life as a widowed single mother while somehow finding time to flirt with a teacher at her son’s school.

The character was initially created by Fielding for a column that ran in the British magazine The Independent in the ’90s, well before Jones and her romantic adventures kickstarted a rom-com renaissance and launched some unlikely fashion trends.

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” is currently scheduled for release in theaters and on Peacock on Feb. 14, 2025.