Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall will star alongside Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant in a new Bridget Jones film.

The 12 Years a Slave actor and One Day star have been cast as new characters in the British romantic comedy franchise. They will join original cast members Zellweger, who is reprising her role as the titular Bridget, and Grant, who returns as her earlier love interest Daniel Cleaver after sitting out of the third film, Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Emma Thompson, who played the despairing obstetrician Doctor Rawlings in the 2016 film, will also return for the new outing, titled Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.

Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding wrote the screenplay for the project, which is an adaptation of her 2013 novel of the same name.

Mad About the Boy is set four years after the previous instalment and sees Bridget as a widow with two small children, following the death of Colin Firth’s character Mark Darcy. The 50-something Bridget ventures back into the dating scene and becomes involved with a 30-year-old man, believed to be played by Woodall.

To Leslie director Michael Morris will helm the fourth chapter, marking the first time a Bridget Jones film has been directed by a man.

It will shoot in London this summer and be released on Peacock in the U.S. on Valentine’s Day 2025 and in cinemas internationally on an undisclosed date.

The romantic comedy franchise launched in 2001 with Bridget Jones’s Diary and was swiftly followed up with 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Fans had to wait to 12 years for the follow-up, Bridget Jones’s Baby, in 2016.

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