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Renee Zellweger Refused to ‘Put Her Foot Down’ Over ‘Bridget Jones’ Axing Colin Firth From No. 4
Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant’s chemistry was red hot while filming the fourth installment of the Bridget Jones franchise, Mad About The Boy, and a source exclusively tells Life & Style they’ve got her former franchise costar Colin Firth steaming with jealousy!
“The story they are telling in the fourth Bridget Jones film and, indeed, the teaser at the end of the third film, is about bringing Hugh Grant’s character back onto the story in a big, comedic way,” the source says.
The first movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary, based on Helen Fielding’s novel of the same name, saw Renée, 55, then 32, find herself in a love triangle between two characters, Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, 64, and Daniel Cleaver, played by Hugh Grant, 64.
With Hugh’s character set to return to the franchise, “that has meant that Colin Firth has been written out of the series,” the insider explains.
“Colin’s a busy guy and has no shortage of opportunities, but this still stings because he was involved with these projects for so long and they are very solid hits all over the world.”
The first Bridget Jones’s Diary was a huge box office success, seeing a return of $282 million against a $25 million budget, along with glowing critical reviews, a loyal fanbase, and high praise for Renée’s performance, who was described as portraying “a sympathetic, likable, funny character, giving this romantic comedy a lot of charm.”
The second installment, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, won the actress a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture and became another box office hit, again pulling in hundreds of millions against a budget of tens of millions.
The most recent Bridget Jones movie, Bridget Jones’s Baby, released in 2016, dropped Hugh, 64, in favor of Patrick Dempsey for the third leg of the love triangle, as the Four Weddings and a Funeral star reportedly disliked the script and pulled out of the movie after wrapping up No. 2.
Despite Colin loyally starring in every Bridget Jones chapter up until now, the source says he’s been put on ice by producers of the fourth movie and even Renée isn’t doing much to fight for him.
“Yes, Colin is at the mercy of the original books written by the creator of the franchise, the novelist Helen Fielding, but movie adaptations are a different matter,” the source says.
The third installment of the franchise strayed away from the author’s novel series, instead focusing on anonymous columns Fielding had written in the early 2000s that began the Bridget Jones saga.
“He certainly could have been written back into the series, but that was not the direction Renée wanted to go, and hers is the most important voice in the room when it comes to how to make these films.”
“If Renée had put her foot down and said Colin has to be in the movie, they would have figured out a way to include him. But she clearly didn’t, and that hurts.”
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