For Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, starring Oscar-winner Renee Zellweger in the title role, arrives in America a week before its scheduled opening on November 19.
The new movie, made for about $50 million, is a sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary that grossed over $280 million worldwide in 2001. It will open at some 500 theaters on November 12 and then add on 2,000 theaters a week later.
The film has just been released in England to a smash opening, overlooking some critical drubbing that said it repeated many gags and lacked spontaneity.
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The trouble in Thailand results from Bridget, after a serious disagreement with Darcy, going to Bangkok on a journalistic assignment. Her former boyfriend Daniel is with her but she feels more for Darcy than ever. However, just as she gets ready to fly back home, she gets busted for drug possession.
But this being a comedy, everything has to end on a pleasant note.
The British press has been full of stories of Zellweger doing the stunts, and not all of them were easy. Director Beeban Kidron said she had hired stunt doubles to help Zellweger with the misadventure scenes, but the actress insisted on doing many of them herself.
'She goes careening down the slope backward, with her bum in the air, and beautifully falls over at the feet of the other characters,' Kidron told the New York Post about a tricky and rather dangerous skiing episode.
Some may think Zellweger's feat of gaining 30 pounds each time for the two movies, aided admirably by French toast, cheesecakes and milkshakes, was no small stunt either.