'Retired' Renée Zellweger 'Can't Quit' Cash-Cow 'Bridget Jones' Franchise — As the Fat Paychecks are Just Too Tempting
'Retired' Renée Zellweger can't turn down Bridget Jones paydays, insiders say.
Dec. 19 2024, Published 6:00 a.m. ET
Renée Zellweger has been lured out of her cozy, far-from-the-limelight love nest to plug her new Bridget Jones flick for all it's worth, said sources, with the promise of a massive payday bonus if the rom-com movie smashes the box office.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the 55-year-old star of the new sequel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, costarring Hugh Grant and set for a February release, has been happily snuggling with 45-year-old toyboy Ant Anstead, a British TV personality, since summer 2021 after meeting on the set of his Discovery+ show Celebrity IOU: Joyride.
Zellweger trades her quiet love life for a huge payday when she goes back to playing Jones.
But the Bridget Jones cash was too good to pass up.
"Over the decades, Renée has kept the flame alive on the Bridget Jones film franchise and with good reason – these are the films that made her rich, worth a cool $90 million, and kept her rich even when she opted to not act at all for years at a time", explained an insider.
"Renée has real profit participation points on the back end of these movies and a rock-solid relationship with her fellow producers and with the creator of the franchise, novelist Helen Fielding.
'Bridget Jones' isn’t just a franchise – it's Zellweger’s $90M golden ticket.
"The upside of all of that is how smoothly this fourth movie came together. You almost never see a fourth movie in a successful series get up and running like this, and that's down to Renée's creative leadership and continued relevance."
Thanks to the super-success of the previous Jones flicks. "Renée has fully earned the total control she has over these films", noted the insider.
With paydays rivaling Cruise and Pitt, Bridget Jones is said to be worth the spotlight for the increasingly reclusive actress.
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"But the downside for Renée and her team is that the promotion of these movies is entirely on her shoulders, and it all comes down to how many interviews she can do, how many red carpets she can walk and how much unpaid media she can generate.
"It's a challenge for a person who is naturally shy like Renée is, but at the end of that long road is a payoff on par with what guys like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt can earn on one of their hit movies!"
