Release Date Set for ‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’

Bridget Jones’s Baby, currently filming, has a release date set for September 16, 2016, according to Deadline.

The feature is the third installment in the Bridget Jones movie franchise, based on Helen Fielding’s international best-selling novel series focusing on the personal ups and downs of its eponymous fictional character. The first two films (Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001 and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 2004) have grossed a combined $544.4 million in worldwide box office. Returning stars, Academy Award winners Renee Zellweger (Cold Mountain) and Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), will be joined by series newcomer Patrick Dempsey (Transformers: Dark of the Moon).

Sharon Maguire, who helmed Bridget Jones’s Diary, has returned to direct. The film is backed by Universal, Miramax and Studiocanal and produced by Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner alongside Debra Hayward.

Zellweger made a string of high-profile movies in the mid 1990s through 2010, since her star-making turn as Tom Cruise’s love interest in 1996’s Jerry Maguire that featured her iconic line “you had me at hello”. She received Oscar nominations over three consecutive years (for Actress in a Leading Role in Bridget Jones’s Diary and Rob Marshall‘s Chicago), landing the Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress in 2004 for Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain.

Firth, who was catapulted to fame with his role as Mr. Darcy in BBC TV’s mini-series, Pride and Prejudice (1995), has remained consistently in the filmgoer’s eye with recent starring roles in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight. He was nominated for his lead performance in Tom Ford’s A Single Man (2009) and won the following year for The King’s Speech. He recently completed filming Michael Grandage’s Genius in which he plays Max Perkins, a book editor at Scribner who oversaw works by the greats, including F. Scott Fitgerald and Ernest Hemingway.