Will new Bridget Jones film finally drop the fat-shaming after Renee Zellwegger's character was ridiculed in the noughties - despite being smaller than the average UK woman?

Helen Fielding's heroine - and her diary - will return to cinema screens next year Read more: Bridget Jones is back! Fourth movie begins filming in May and Renee Zellweger's already looking for a London home

There was heartening news this week for fans of the Bridget Jones films; another installment is on its way.

Nearly a quarter of a century after cinemagoers first fell in love with – and laughed out loud at – Helen Fielding’s diary-writing singleton Bridget Jones, she’s poised for a fourth outing at the box office.

Bridget Jones 4 will begin filming in London in May, with pre-production already well under way.

The first movie, adapted from Fielding’s 1996 novel of the same name, landed in 2001 with Renee Zellweger playing 30-something Bridget, Hugh Grant as  womaniser Daniel Cleaver, and Colin Firth in the role of barrister Mark Darcy.

Rom com heroine Bridget Jones is set to return to screens next year, with the fourth movie currently in pre-production; it’s hoped the scrutiny over Renee Zellweger’s weight, which plagued the first two films in 2001 and 2004, will no longer be an issue

Co-written with Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral writer Richard Curtis, the first film took a whopping £250million at the global box office, and spawned two more films Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 2004, and Bridget Jones’s Baby in 2016.

However, there was a murkier side to the franchise that has largely been glossed over – Bridget’s weight. 

Zellweger promoting the first film Bridget Jones’ Diary in 2001; the star gained weight for the role and told The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2016 that her physical appearance was the thing she had ben asked most about while promoting the first and second films

Renee Zellweger piled on the pounds to play the character, and the first two films in particular see Bridget routinely fat-shamed for appearing as an average-sized woman.

At the start of the first film, Bridget Jones’ Diary, viewers are told she weighs 136 pounds, just over 61kg, and wears a size 12 dress. 

The average weight of a British woman in 2021 was 71.8kg, and the average UK dress size is a 16. 

In one scene, Bridget’s on/off boyfriend Daniel Cleaver’s new girlfriend  is heard saying: ‘I thought you said she was thin’ during a scene in his bathroom. 

In the first film, released in 2001, Renee Zellweger played 30-something singleton Bridget, with Hugh Grant, right, as womaniser Daniel Cleaver, and Colin Firth, left, in the role of barrister Mark Darcy

Bridget Jones’ Diary opens with the main protagonist telling viewers she weighs 136 pounds, just over 61kg – and needs to shed 20lbs (9kg). The average weight of a British woman in 2021 was 71.8kg

The latest film in the Bridget series is set for release in 2025, with filming underway later this year. Pictured: Zellweger in Bridget Jones’ Diary in 2001

In another scene in the first movie, her friend asks her: ‘Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer?’ when she tells her that her barrister boyfriend Mark Darcy, portrayed by Colin Firth, said he likes her just as she is.

While Bridget was constantly told she was fat by others, she was also self-deprecating about her size.

After hearing Mark Darcy insulting her to his mother in the second movie, she says of herself: ‘And that was it. Right there. Right there that was the moment.

‘I suddenly realised that unless something changed soon, I was going to live a life where my major relationship was with a bottle of wine and I’d finally die fat and alone and be found three weeks later eaten by Alsatians or I was about to turn into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.’

In another scene in the first movie, from 2001, her friend asks her: ‘Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer?’ when she tells her that her barrister boyfriend Mark Darcy, portrayed by Colin Firth (pictured playing Mark), said he likes her just as she is

Bridget’s weight was also referenced constantly in her diary entries in Fielding’s original books, something that was resolutely carried over into the films, the exception being the third movie, in which the character of Bridget is pregnant. 

But there are even references there; a friend of Bridget’s mother Pamela congratulates her on her surprise pregnancy, saying: ‘Wonderful, we thought you’d just got all fat again.’ 

In the years after the first two films, Zellweger spoke out about the scrutiny of her body in the role. 

While Bridget, who was created by writer Helen Fielding in the late 90s, was constantly told she was fat by others, she was also self-deprecating about her size. She also kept a log of her weight in her famous diary

Pictured is Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones in the movie from 2011

She told The Today Show in 2016: ‘I never thought she [Bridget] had a weight issue. I thought that was just something that, all of us, we think: “Oh, I’d love to change this thing about myself” when in fact nobody notices it but you.’

A year later, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Zellweger said, in a clip that resurfaced last year, that the question she was asked most about her appearances in the first two Bridget Jones’ films was about her weight. 

The star said: ‘It saddens me so much because it seems to imply that one way of being is acceptable and the other isn’t valuable, and that’s just not true.’ 

Ahead of filming in May, Renee Zellweger is reportedly already searching for a home to live in while she’s in Britain, according to sources.

The new film comes eight years after the last instalment, Bridget Jones’s Baby and is to be based on Ms Fielding’s 2013 novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which saw her raising young children as a single mum while navigating social media and dating apps.