Bridget Jones fans heartbroken after finding out the real reason Colin Firth’s character has been killed off in new film

BRIDGET Jones fans were left ecstatic when it was announced that Renee Zellweger would be getting back into character for a fourth movie. 

However, this joy quickly turned to heartbreak for many when the trailer revealed that Colin Firth’s character Mark Darcy has been killed off in Mad About The Boy.

The trailer shows Bridget navigating life as a widower and battling motherhood alone - although she does seem happy about Leo Woodall’s character coming into her life – a handsome 29-year-old named Roxster.

Despite some fans slamming the movie creators for “spoiling the movie” by killing off the previous film’s main heartthrob, others were quick to make a poignant observation.

Taking to X, formerly Twitter, one fan said: “Can't be mad at the new Bridget Jones plot anymore bc i found out that's what happened to the author.”

Bridget’s new chapter is indeed close to British writer Helen Fielding’s heart, as her ex-partner and father of her two children, Kevin Curran, died of cancer in 2016.

This was the same year that her close friend and Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher died too.

Helen started to write the screenplay for Mad About the Boy during the pandemic when the feeling of loss was even more poignant.

She wrote: “I wanted to show how you can feel both a sense of humour and a sense of perspective – your friends, your community, your resilience can get you through these things and you can still laugh.”

Helen met Kevin, a writer and executive producer on The Simpsons, in LA on a publicity tour.

The pair started dating and Fielding moved from London to Los Angeles to live with him, and they went on to have two children: Dashiell, born in February 2004, and Romy, born in July 2006.

Fielding's novel Bridget Jones's Diary started life as a column in the Independent newspaper. 

She was approached to write a column about being a single woman in London and, too embarrassed to write about her own experiences, Fielding created an anonymous character to write under.

This character was loved by readers, and Fielding wrote Bridget Jones's Diary on the back of its popularity. The paperback shot to the top of the best-seller chart.

Fielding went on to pen the rest of the sequence of novels: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries.

She also joined the screenwriting team on the associated movies, starring  Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. 

The first film, released in 2001, made more than £222million at the box office.

In a survey conducted by The Guardian, Bridget Jones’s Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.