A fourth Bridget Jones film is on the way with actress Renee Zellweger to begin filming in May

Her rollercoaster love life, her weight struggles, and her impressive consumption of chardonnay and cigarettes have gripped the world for more than two decades.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal one-time singleton Bridget Jones is back.

A fourth movie will begin filming in London in May, 23 years after Helen Fielding’s heroine first hit the silver screen, with pre-production already well under way.

Renee Zellweger will return in the lead role and is already looking 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.

Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, who played love rivals Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver, are both expected to return in their roles in some capacity.

A movie source said: “Bridget is back and is about to take over London. Filming is being mapped out already and all of the preproduction is in place.

“There was some uncertainty about whether it would get off the ground, but the movie is coming.

“Renee is excited about bringing Bridget back. She adores the character so much. Bridget Jones fever is expected to sweep across London this spring.”

Ms Zellweger, 54, already has a team seeking accommodation for her and her boyfriend, TV presenter Ant Anstead, 44, while she is working on the project.

On previous shoots she hired a bachelorette pad in Kensington, West London, where she would go unnoticed as she shopped locally.

But this time she and Anstead, who hails from Plymouth, are understood to be looking for something bigger.

The most recent film, released in 2016, saw Bridget shocked when she found out she was pregnant.

It ended with her marrying Mark, the high-flying lawyer who she’d had on and off feelings for across the three movies.

It was also revealed that he was the father to her baby.

Grant didn’t appear in that movie as Cleaver was presumed dead at the beginning.

At the end, though, there was a newspaper report that said he had been found alive.

A book based on that story was published after the film, and after the Mad About The Boy novel, although it was set earlier.

And in Mad About The Boy, Mark Darcy is dead, leaving Jones as a widow, although it is not known if the movie will be faithful to that.

When asked about a fourth movie instalment, Fielding previously told Radio Times: “Every film that gets made is a miracle. I think it’s really difficult to make films and to make them happen and to make them good and we want it to be really good. But I really hope so. I’d love to see it on the screen.”

There were rumours last year the movie had been axed due to the US actors’ strikes, but sources said those claims were “nonsense”.

The first film, Bridget Jones’s Diary, came out in 2001 and grossed £222 million at the box office – more than ten times what it cost to make.

Ms Zellweger’s last film was the 2019 biopic of Judy Garland.