“Bridget Jones, it’s time to live.”
These words, spoken in Renée Zellweger’s warm, raspy narrator’s voice, close out the new trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Billed as the “last chapter” in the romantic comedy franchise that began with Bridget Jones’s Diarythis new film will close out a 24-year saga that has proven to be one of the most successful rom-com properties in modern film history.
Jay Maidment/Universal
The trailer begins with Zellweger’s narration too, but she swaps her character’s trademark spunkiness for a markedly more somber, wistful tone. “In life, there are memories that will never leave us,” Zellweger says, over a clip of Jones and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) meeting on the sidewalk, their eyes brimming with love, a callback to their nuptials, which closed the preceding film, Bridget Jones’s Baby. “But sometimes, those memories are suddenly all we’re left with,” she says, and Firth disappears from the frame.
So our heroine is single again, and if the previous films taught us anything, she’ll be mingling in no time. Familiar faces sally forth, from Emma Thompson’s Dr. Rawlings, to Jim Broadbent’s Colin Jones, Bridget’s father, and even Hugh Grant, whose character Daniel Cleaver was originally implied to have died in a plane crash in Bridget Jones’s Baby but revealed to be found alive at the end. “You are effectively a nun, a very very naughty nun,” Cleaver tells her in the trailer.
The trailer (above) introduces plenty of exciting new faces too, promising a fresh reset to the franchise. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a handsome teacher at Jones’s children’s school, Isla Fisher plays her new neighbor Rebecca, and The White Lotus star Leo Woodall plays her new main crush, Roxster. “How old are you?” Jones asks him, and is shocked to learn he’s 28 (or 29, as he corrects). “If you don’t shag him, I will,” Sarah Solemani deadpans as Miranda, Jones’ friend and coworker.
Firth’s absence haunts the new trailer, his wryly smiling face flicking across the screen every few scenes to indicate that Mad About the Boy will be as much about Jones’ new love affairs as it will her grief over however source author Helen Fielding, and fellow screenwriters Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan decided to dispense with him.
Zellweger indicated as early as 2019 that she was down for more Bridget Jones. “If they call me, I’ll go running,” she told the ladies on The Talk. In 2022, Fielding, who has written four novels featuring the Jones character and collaborated on all the films, confirmed a fourth and final film was in the works. The principal cast was announced in June.
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Jay Maidment/Universal
Grant previously revealed he made a tweak to his character in the upcoming film. “I loved the script — it made me cry, and I wanted to help with this one,” he told Vanity Fair. “But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all. They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about.” So the actor took matters into his own hands and “wrote some scenes” that ended up in the final version.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy will stream exclusively on Peacock beginning Feb. 13, 2025.
