Bridget Jones is headed back to the big screen.
Universal Pictures and Working Title are developing a film adaptation of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Deadline reports. It will be the fourth movie to feature Fielding’s iconic character, a single London woman who tries, with mixed results, to eliminate her bad habits and find love.
Fielding’s novel, published in 2013 by Knopf, follows Jones, now a 51-year-old single mother, as she dates a man 20 years younger than her. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Not as rich as Fielding’s first two Bridget Jones books. Bridget’s fans will want it anyway. When Fielding is funny, she’s very funny.”
Renée Zellweger, who earned an Oscar nomination for playing Jones in the 2001 film adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary, the first novel in Fielding’s series, will return for the new movie. Hugh Grant, who starred in the first two Bridget Jones films, will also appear in the film, as will Emma Thompson, who starred in the third Jones movie, Bridget Jones’s Baby.
Also cast in the Mad About the Boy film are Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, The Martian) and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus, One Day). Michael Morris, known for his work on television series including 13 Reasons Why and Better Call Saul, will direct.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
