The first trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy has been released, confirming the death of Colin Firth’s character Mark Darcy.
The fourth film – co-written by Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding, with contributions by Abi Morgan and Dan Mazer – is based on Fielding’s own 2013 novel of the same name.
In the book, Darcy dies in a tragic accident. While Firth appears briefly in the new trailer, it is soon explained that the character now exists only in Jones’s memories, as she is now “a widow, with two wonderful children.”
Two new love interests for Jones are introduced in the form of Leo Woodall(One Day, The White Lotus) and Chiwetel Ejiofor(12 Years a Slave, Doctor Strange).
Hugh Grant also reprises his role as Daniel Cleaver in the film series, having said last month that he was “crammed in” to the new movie despite there being “no obvious role” for him.
“It is a good and moving script – it is extremely funny but very sad,” Grant said on The Graham Norton Show on October 3. “There was no obvious role for me, but I was crammed in.”
He added: “So we didn’t have a 60-year-old Daniel Cleaver wandering around looking at young girls, I made up a good interim story for him.”
The character of perpetual singleton Bridget Jones was created by Helen Fielding in a column for The Independent.
“The Independent asked me if I’d write a column about single life in London as myself. I said no because (ironically enough) I thought it would be embarrassing and exposing,” Fielding later recalled. “Then Charlie Leadbeater – a senior editor – suggested I write as an imaginary character, and I thought, ‘Yessss!’”
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Fielding published the novelization of her columns in 1996 followed by a sequel, The Edge of Reason, in 1999.
The first film adaptation, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was released in 2001, with sequels Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Bridget Jones’s Baby following in 2004 and 2016. The three films together have grossed more than $760m worldwide.
The latest sequel is based on Fielding’s 2013 novel, which follows the 51-year-old single mother of two children as she navigates romance in an era of social media and dating apps. The original story follows the comedic heroine as she continues to obsesses over her weight, alcohol intake, and calorie count in a new world filled with new technology and new norms in her 50s.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy will be released in cinemas internationally on February 12, 2025, and will be available to stream on Peacock in the US beginning February 13, 2025.