What's a Bridget Jones film without Hugh Grant?!
Say it isn't so!
In what's sure to be disappointing news for fans of the Bridget Jones' Diary films starring Renee Zellwegger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, Grant confirmed in a new interview with Free Radio in the West Midlands that he won't be reprising his role as the shady-but-lovable Daniel Cleaver in the third installment of the franchise.
"I decided not to do it," the 54-year-old actor said, "but I think they're going to go ahead and do it without Daniel. The book's excellent, by the way, but the script is completely different -- well, the script as I last saw it a few years ago."
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The new development is also a shock given that -- SPOILER ALERT! -- author Helen Fielding decided to kill off the Mark Darcy character (Colin Firth) in the saga's third novel Bridget Jones's Diary: Mad About The Boy. Last September, it was revealed that Bridget did in fact marry Mark and had two children with him, though she is now a widow bringing up their kids alone. The book takes place five years after Darcy's death, in which the now 51-year-old famously unlucky-in-love heroine finds herself back on the singles market.
.... So who's left for the films, Renee Zellweger?!
The first Bridget Jones film, Bridget Jones' Diary, was both a critical and box-office success in 2001, and though its 2004 sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, was also an undeniable commercial hit, it didn't fare too well with both the critics and fans.
And though there has been talk about a third Bridget Jones film for a while now, production has reportedly already been rife with problems, with The Sun reporting that British actress Emma Thompson has just been enlisted to save the script with a redraft.
Would you still watch a third Bridget Jones film without Hugh Grant?
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But did you know that the films' beloved star Renee actually started off as an extra in 1993's Dazed and Confused?!
Watch the video below to revisit her surprising start in Hollywood!