BRIDGET’S BACK! BUT WHO’S THE DADDY? "Renee Zellweger has agreed to reprise her signature role as the hapless heroine for a third film, Bridget Jones’s Baby"

Renee Zellweger was reportedly reluctant to make a sequel for some time

Sunday December 4,2011

By Henry Fitzherbert

BRIDGET JONES is coming back, and this time she’s having a baby.

Renee Zellweger has agreed to reprise her signature role as the hapless heroine for a third film, Bridget Jones’s Baby, which will start filming early next year.

Hugh Grant and Colin Firth will be back as love rivals Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy. Peter Cattaneo, who directed The Full Monty and hit BBC sitcom Rev, is in talks to head the project.

A Hollywood insider said: “All the key cast members are on board and filming could start as early as January.”

The story reportedly follows Bridget’s pregnancy and question marks over the child’s paternity as once again the ditzy former PR girl falls for the charms of dastardly Cleaver.

Unlike the first two films, Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001 and 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, it is not based on a Helen Fielding book. It is thought to be partly inspired by a newspaper column she wrote between 2005 and 2006 in which Bridget gave birth to a son.

The plot line echoed Fielding’s own life as she fell pregnant for the first time at 43 and had her second child at 48. She has co-written the screenplay for Bridget Jones’s Baby with One Day author David Nicholls and American writer-director Paul Feig who made the summer’s smash US comedy Bridesmaids.

Zellweger, 42, was reportedly reluctant to make a sequel for some time, particularly at the prospect of having to gain weight.

But film commentator Terence Doyle said: “She’s experienced something of a post-Bridget Jones career slump so I’m not surprised she’s keen to reprise her most popular role.

“The same could be said for Hugh Grant so it’s a good opportunity for him to reconnect with cinemagoers.”

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