When the Weinstein Company teamed up with their old studio Miramax at the end of last year and announced plans to produce sequels to some of Miramax's greatest hits, Bridget Jones's Diary was one of the titles mentioned with potential. Of course the movie has already had a sequel, 2004's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and while one of the stars (Renee Zellweger) can't seem to catch a career break these days, the other (Colin Firth) is a newly minted Oscar winner, and neither seem all that likely to return to the material. As for Hugh Grant, hey, who knows what he's going to do.

And yet, UK tabloid The Sun reports that Zellweger has agreed to star in a third film, so long as she doesn't have to put on weight as she did for the first two. And even Firth would be in-- he apparently told the BBC last month that it "could be quite fun" to return to Bridget, Mark and Daniel now that they're all getting older. The reported plot for the film would have Bridget pregnant, and not sure whether the father is Firth's or Grant's character. Given that the second film ended with Bridget accepting Mark's proposal I'm not sure how they'll work that twist out, but when a sequel is this brazenly desperate, these things can always be managed.

It's easy to see why Zellweger would want to return to one of her career high points, given that she hasn't had anything approximating a hit since 2005's Cinderella Man, but that's pretty much the only reason I can think of for this movie to exist. Then again, we're dealing with a UK tabloid here, publications notorious for publishing false rumors. But sadly, this sequel seems a lot more likely than a lot of the stuff they've been known to publish. This might be something we have to deal with after all.