Bridget Jones is back in ‘Mad About the Boy’: Watch the first trailer
Bridget Jones is back.
On Tuesday, Peacock released the first trailer for “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the fourth film in the long-running romantic comedy series and the first since “Bridget Jones’s Baby” in 2016.
Things are different this time for Jones, and not just because this is the first film in the franchise that will bypass theaters entirely. As revealed in the “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” trailer, Jones’s husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), has died, leaving Jones a widowed mother of two young children. Things move apace from there, with several of her friends – including former flame Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) – suggesting Jones get back out there to reconnect with other potential mates, including a young man played by Leo Woodall (“The White Lotus”) and a more age-appropriate match in the form of a science teacher played by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Here’s the official plot synopsis, which offers more details on where things stand in the movie:
Bridget is alone once again, widowed four years ago, when Mark (Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan. She’s now a single mother to 9-year-old Billy and 4-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Grant).
Pressured by her Urban Family —Shazzer, Jude and Tom, her work colleague Miranda, her mother, and her gynecologist Dr. Rawlings (Emma Thompson) — to forge a new path toward life and love, Bridget goes back to work and even tries out the dating apps, where she’s soon pursued by a dreamy and enthusiastic younger man (Woodall). Now juggling work, home and romance, Bridget grapples with the judgment of the perfect mums at school, worries about Billy as he struggles with the absence of his father, and engages in a series of awkward interactions with her son’s rational-to-a-fault science teacher (Ejiofor).
In addition to Firth, Grant, Woodall, Eijofor, and Thompson, the cast also includes Isla Fisher (as Bridget’s new neighbor) and returning franchise veterans Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones.
Michael Morris, who many may remember from the small film with a giant heart “To Leslie,” is the director of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” The script was written by Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding “with contributions” from Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”) and Dan Mazer (“Borat”).
“Bridget Jones’s Baby” starred Zellweger, Firth, and Patrick Dempsey, and featured the offscreen death and resurrection of Grant’s Cleaver – who, as the film opens, is feared dead in a plane crash and later reported alive by a newspaper headline. Grant did not appear in “Bridget Jones’s Baby.”
Jones was nominated for Best Actress for the first Bridget Jones film (she later won two Oscars, one for “Cold Mountain” and one for “Judy”).
“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” starts streaming on February 13.