Bridget Jones Diary Poster - P 2012
Singletons, rejoice: Bridget Jones will return in a third novel to arrive next fall, author Helen Fielding has announced.
The book will take place in Jones’ stomping grounds of London with the character entering a new chapter of her life.
Fielding, one of the pioneers of chick lit, created an icon out of bumbling, unlucky-in-love Bridget, whose flaws and imperfections endeared her to a captive audience of women who lived vicariously through her romantic dalliances with a caddish publishing exec and a socially awkward lawyer (portrayed in the films by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, respectively).
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Renee Zellweger, of course, played Bridget in the 2001 film adaptation of Fielding’s smash novel Bridget Jones’s Diary and 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, based on the writer’s sequel.
“She has grown up. I mean, my life has moved on and her life will move on too,” Fielding said Wednesday in a BBC Radio interview. “And in the same way as the first Bridget book was looking at the way that a thirtysomething single woman was branded as a tragic spinster — and then we got the new idea of a ‘singleton’ — it’s looking at later phases in life where you get branded as a certain thing.”
Fielding added that “it’s a bit scary bringing out a new one” but that the book was making her laugh and she’s enjoying writing it.
There’s a third film being planned reuniting Zellweger, Colin Firth and Grant — and titled Bridget Jones’s Baby (which hints strongly at the plot of Fieldings’ upcoming novel). And, just in case fans can’t get enough Bridget, a musical based on the book-to-film franchise is also in the works.
