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It’s been billed as one of the hottest movies of 2016 and following the success of the previous two in the series, it’s really no surprise.

However, as well as the standard cast members and all of the basic information that industry publications like to bore readers with, there are some juicy facts to be had.

Some of these have been taken from experienced writers in the business, with David Berkowitz Chicago being one source, but they are interesting nevertheless.

Whether you’ve seen the movie, or are mulling over whether or not to take the trip to the big screen, sit tight and read some of the best Bridget Jones’ Baby facts we have pulled in over the last few weeks.

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If you’ve not seen it, feel free to read the book

There are some people who swear by reading the book before seeing the film itself and if you fall into said category, you don’t need to worry about ruining the surprise.

In the previous two Bridget Jones movies, the plot has at least vaguely been based on the novels. However, to say that this film is different from the original would be an understatement – there are some hugely notable differences this time around.

Interestingly, the writers have taken a different route and based it more on some of the author’s columns that have been penned in newspapers over the years.

This begs the question on whether or not there could be a fourth movie, even though Bridget Jones was just a three-book series.

There’s no Hugh

Let’s be honest, Hugh Grant has played a massive role in this franchise. While Renée Zellweger will obviously always steal all the headlines, Grant has never been far behind.

This time, he’s not to be seen. He declined to be involved and it remains to be seen just how it will be received in his absence.

…But there’s a place for a certain singer

If we stay on the topic of the cast, there is a place for a certain singer. Ed Sheeran is appearing in the movie, as he continues his break from his music career.

Elsewhere, you needn’t feel about any of the other old members returning. Shazza, Tom and Jude are all back, while some will be interested to read that Emma Thompson steps in to play the midwife.

Who’s the daddy?

If you’re not in the mood for any sort of spoiler, it’s time to click the back button. However, as the title of this movie has probably given away, the main theme is of Bridget Jones’ baby.

The story is about who the father to the baby is and incredibly, few people actually know the outcome. The film makers have shot three endings, in a practice very similar to what a lot of TV shows do, in a bid to keep a lid on the outcome. It means that not one member of the cast, even Zelweiger herself, knew who the daddy was before the film was released.

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A printing mix up led to early copies of the latest Bridget Jones book – Mad About the Boy – having a chunk of David Jason’s memoirs in the middle.

About 40 pages of Sir David Jason’s My Life were printed in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, both of which came out on the same day.

“The printers have had a Bridget moment,” said publishers Vintage.

It said it was recalling the misprinted copies and replacing them with correct versions.

“A printing error has been detected in some of the very early copies of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy,” said a Vintage spokesman.

A printing mix up led to early copies of the latest Bridget Jones book, Mad About the Boy, having a chunk of David Jason's memoirs in the middle

A printing mix up led to early copies of the latest Bridget Jones book, Mad About the Boy, having a chunk of David Jason’s memoirs in the middle

“Copies printed on one day have given readers an accidental preview of David Jason’s autobiography.”

Both Helen Fielding and David Jason’s book were published on what the publishing world has dubbed “Super Thursday”, when publishing houses put out some of their highest-priority titles for the Christmas market.

Among other books released are Jennifer Saunders’ autobiography Bonkers, My Life in Laughs; Mo Farah’s Twin Ambitions and John Bishop’s How Did All This Happen?.

Mad About the Boy signals the final chapter of hapless “singleton” Bridget Jones’s diaries.

Fans may already know one of the significant plotlines after extracts were earlier published in the Sunday Times Magazine.

Although Helen Fielding herself approved the reveal, some fans were shocked to be told of such a major twist before the book had even been published.

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Bridget Jones fans have expressed their horror at the news that author Helen Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in new book Mad About The Boy.

In extracts from her new book, published in the Sunday Times magazine, Bridget Jones reveals that Mark Darcy – her husband and father to her two children, died five years earlier.

Mark Darcy was played by Colin Firth in the Bridget Jones movies.

Bridget Jones fans have expressed their horror at the news that author Helen Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in new book Mad About The Boy

Bridget Jones fans have expressed their horror at the news that author Helen Fielding has killed off Mark Darcy in new book Mad About The Boy

Helen Fielding is due to speak at next month’s Cheltenham Literature Festival.

In the published extracts, Bridget Jones is revealed to have two children Mabel and Billy and a 30-year-old toyboy called Roxster.

Helen Fielding’s first book Bridget Jones’s Diary was published in 1996 and a sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was released three years later.

Written in the form of a personal diary, the novels chronicle the life of a 30-something single working woman living in London.

In 2001, a film adaptation starring American actress Renee Zellweger, with Hugh Grant as womanizing Daniel Cleaver and Colin Firth as Darcy, was released.

Renee Zellweger was Oscar-nominated for the role and, in 2004, the sequel was released, although it was not as critically well received.

Mad About The Boy is due for release on October 10.

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Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, Helen Fielding’s first novel in 14 years, is to be published later this year.

The novel is Helen Fielding’s third about the hapless singleton, following Bridget Jones’s Diary, which was published in 1996, and sequel The Edge Of Reason in 1999.

The books sold more than 15 million copies in 40 countries and were adapted for the movies starring Renee Zellweger in the lead role, Colin Firth as Mark Darcy and Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which will be published on October 10, is set in present day London and ‘represents a totally new phase in Bridget’s life’.

An extract released by publishers showed that Bridget Jones is still prone to mishaps.

She writes after sending a text message: “You see, this is the trouble with the modern world. If it was the days of letter-writing, I would never even have started to find his address, a pen, a piece of paper, an envelope, a stamp and gone outside at 11.30 p.m. to find a postbox.

“A text is gone at the brush of a fingertip, like a nuclear bomb or Exocet missile. Dating Rule No 1: Do not text when drunk.”

Bridget Jones Mad About The Boy, Helen Fielding’s first novel in 14 years, is to be published later this year

Bridget Jones Mad About The Boy, Helen Fielding’s first novel in 14 years, is to be published later this year

A statement from publishers Jonathan Cape said: “Bridget is older, she is still keeping a diary, but she is also immersed in texting and experimenting with social media, with an emphasis on <<social!>>.”

Jonathan Cape publishing director Dan Franklin said: “As a comic writer, Helen is without equal. Over 15 years ago she gave a voice to a generation of young women with the original Bridget book.

“Now they’ve grown up and she’s doing it again….this time with all the joys and complications of social media.”

Bridget Jones, who filled the pages of her diary with her failed efforts to find love and measured her life in the amount of cigarettes she smoked, units of alcohol she drank and number of calories she lost or gained, started life as a weekly column in The Independent in 1995.

Best-selling English author Helen Fielding recently wrote that the dating scene had become even more difficult for women thanks to the advent of email, Twitter, Facebook and texting.

Writing in the margins of her novel Bridget Jones’ Diary for a charity book sale, she said that she thought that finding a partner is “so much worse now”.

Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth recently dashed hopes that a third Bridget Jones film would be hitting the big-screen soon.

“Unfortunately, it might be a bit of a long wait. I wouldn’t say that it’s completely dead in the water, but the way it’s going you might be seeing Bridget Jones’ granddaughter’s story being told by the time we get there,” he quipped.

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Gok Wan latest collection of shapewear for SimplyBe, which includes Banger Boosters, Slicker Knickers, Pull Me In, Curve Controller, Bombshell Plunge and Divine Outline, is winning rave reviews already.

Banning boring beige and bringing in glam colors, lace and retro Fifties styling, Gok Wan is tearing up the rule book and bringing sexy shapewear to the masses.

His new range, which he describes as “glam 50s”, is functional shapewear with all the crucial elements there -high waisted pants with tummy control panels, multiway bras, slips that hold in all the lumps and bumps – but it comes in bright, candy store colors and sweetly retro prints.

There is bow detailing, contrast stitching and trim and pretty lace detailing that makes it possible to actually reveal it in the boudoir – rather than sneaking off, Bridget Jones style, to swap your granny knickers for something a little more slinky.

Gok Wan's new range of shapewear for SimplyBe dispenses with traditional beige big pants in favor of pretty colors and polka dots

Gok Wan’s new range of shapewear for SimplyBe dispenses with traditional beige big pants in favor of pretty colors and polka dots

In his typically flamboyant style, Gok Wan has penned a few lines on each item: “Pull on a pair of these beauteous briefs and I guarantee, my gorgeous, that you’ll instantly feel oh-so-flirty and fabulous!

“High-waisted for a cool retro look, the front panel works to lightly control the curves of your tum, whilst the contrast front-piping will doubly help to flatter your fantastic figure.

“I’ve added ruching along the back to get that bottom of yours looking delightfully peachy and just for you, I’ve added some seriously sexy, detachable suspenders my darling, you won’t find a harder-working pair of panties. Enjoy!”

While most of the collection is indeed seriously sexy, some of the more extreme garments are still best left under wraps. The Pull Me In Pants that look like high-waisted cycling shorts and the white apple-catcher Slicker Knicker are not the kind of undies you’d be keen to reveal on a date, for instance… But all in all, this is a sexy little range of shapewear that says a resounding NO to beige.

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Until recently no fashionista would be seen dead in seasonal patterned sweater, but now the kitsch style is a must-have for designers and celebrities alike.

How did Christmas sweaters become so popular?

They might be embroidered with reindeer, or snowflakes, or a cheerful Father Christmas.

Knitted from variety of garish woollen hues, they look as though they are being worn to please a kindly but sartorially clueless grandmother.

Once any self-respecting young adult would have been horrified to open their wrapping paper and find they had been gifted such a garment.

But somehow Christmas sweaters have become not just acceptable, but cool – the gaudier the better.

Fashionable chains like Urban Outfitters and Topshop stock entire ranges of sweaters gaily adorned with holly, fir trees and so on.

High-end designers have got in on the act, too. Ralph Lauren sells a snowflake-patterned turtleneck for $1,277. One yellow-and-pink Stella McCartney creation featuring two prancing deer retails at $1,230.

Celebrities as diverse as Kanye West, Cheryl Cole, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Matt Damon, Samantha Cameron and Snoop Dogg have all been pictured in various woollen improvisations on the theme.

Quite why trend-setters have decided that Andy Williams and Bing Crosby crooning festive ditties before a roaring fire, represent the ne plus ultra of style is surely one of fashion’s more baffling mysteries.

For most people in the UK, the arresting visual impact of the Christmas jumper first registered when Renee Zellweger’s protagonist of the 2001 film Bridget Jones’s Diary was introduced to her suitor, Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy, as he wore a roll-neck affair adorned with a giant reindeer’s head.

In North America, the trend was already getting well under way. Ugly Christmas sweater parties – in which attendees compete to wear the vilest seasonal pullover – are thought to have first been held by students in Vancouver around the turn of the millennium.

The craze quickly spread across the continent. Undergraduates would scour their parents’ wardrobes and second-hand clothes shops looking for the most hideous festive tops they could find.

A mini-industry of retailers sourcing or manufacturing especially tasteless garments quickly mushroomed.

Adam Paulson, a 30-year-old from Crown Point, Indiana, discovered this could be a profitable enterprise when he formed the online store uglychristmassweaterparty.com in 2006 with two friends.

“The more stuff on the sweater, the more glittery and jangly it is, the more it will sell,” he says.

But somewhere along the line the Christmas jumper phenomenon ceased to be about looking as dreadful as possible – a sort of yuletide version of Halloween – and became something that esteemed fashion designers and High Street shoppers alike could buy into.

Until recently no fashionista would be seen dead in seasonal patterned sweater, but now the kitsch style is a must-have for designers and celebrities alike

Until recently no fashionista would be seen dead in seasonal patterned sweater, but now the kitsch style is a must-have for designers and celebrities alike

The change in emphasis has been attributed to the rise of that much-maligned archetype, the hipster – the young urban bohemian, attired in self-consciously quirky thrift-store clothes. Their visual aesthetic – tight jeans, over-sized glasses, garish second-hand T-shirts – was exemplified in the films of Wes Anderson and, in the UK, parodied in the Channel 4 satire Nathan Barley.

This subculture, growing in enclaves like Portland, Oregon, Williamsburg, New York and London’s East End, was quickly appropriated by the mainstream.

The hipsters’ fondness for all things twee and retro – baking cupcakes, riding fixed-wheel bikes, using Polaroid cameras instead of digital – meant Christmas jumpers could be re-cast as modish.

“The whole hipster movement definitely helped,” says Adam Paulson.

“It started off with college-age kids. Now it’s work parties.”

In the UK, where ugly sweater parties had never quite caught on in the same way, the onset of the phenomenon was perhaps more sudden.

The popularity of Danish thriller The Killing – whose heroine, Sarah Lund, sported an array of knitwear, some of it snowflake-patterned – added to the garment’s allure.

But even now, it isn’t enough just to buy any old Christmas jumper, says former Clothes Show presenter Caryn Franklin.

To look fashionable, she says, one had to be doing it for the right reasons.

“It’s hipsters that can wear it – they give it some edge,” adds Caryn Franklin.

“The cooler brands like Topshop or Urban Outfitters can do it. But If Marks and Spencers were selling them, they wouldn’t have the same credibility.”

It’s this idea that a simple pullover must be accessorized with a raised eyebrow has turned some against Christmas jumpers.

“It’s not the jumpers I mind, it’s the claim of <<irony>>,” writes Guardian fashion columnist Hadley Freeman, casting the UK’s fondness for such garments as proof that many British men are “ashamed of genuine emotion”.

But Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, author of Not Your Mother’s Morals: How the New Sincerity Is Changing Pop Culture for the Better, believes there is nothing ironic at all about patterned woollens.

Instead, he argues Christmas jumpers and, more generally, the hipster preference for everything retro and vintage are deeply rooted in a longing for the heartfelt and the sincere.

While individuals might insist they are wearing a sweater ironically to give themselves an emotional get-out, Jonathan D. Fitzgerald believes that deep down they are expressing a longing for the comforting certainties of a traditional Christmas.

“Nostalgia is a huge hipster virtue,” he says.

“This isn’t about irony, it’s about kitsch.

“This is about looking back to something nostalgic – <<Oh, my mom used to wear sweaters like that>>. It’s only people who are afraid to express the fact that they enjoy it who say it’s ironic.”

If Jonathan D. Fitzgerald is correct, even the most achingly fashionably urban trendsetters are still hoping for a cosy family festive season.

It’s enough to make you buy a new jumper to celebrate.

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Renee Zellweger showed off her rail-thin frame as she left the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood yesterday.

Renee Zellweger sported a brown checked dress which cinched in at her tiny frame and appeared too big for her.

Her very slender pins were also visible in the short utilitarian frock and the Bridget Jones star made her legs look even longer and slimmer by donning a pair of nude platform peep toe pumps.

Renee Zellweger wore her honey blonde locks piled atop her head in a ballerina bun and toted a crocodile skin handbag.

Despite her gaunt appearance she seemed in good spirits and flashed a smile to photographers before stepping into her red Mini and speeding off.

Renee Zellweger showed off her rail-thin frame as she left the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood yesterday

Renee Zellweger showed off her rail-thin frame as she left the Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood yesterday

The actress will soon be preparing to reprise her role as Bridget Jones in a third installation of the comedy saga.

But it is believed that the star will be sporting a fat suit instead of piling on the pounds once again for the film.

She famously gained two stone for the first and second films before dieting back to her usual slim self.

Her co-star Hugh Grant revealed earlier this year that though production has been held up yet again, fans can expect to see yet another love triangle between his character, Daniel Cleaver, Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy.

He told MTV back in April: “I’ve seen some scripts. They haven’t quite hit the nail yet, but they will. They’re working on it.”

Of the love triangle, he said: “Our public demands some more fisticuffs!”

The third film was first announced in August of last year.

Bridesmaids director Paul Feig was originally in talks to helm the film, though the Full Monty’s Peter Cattaneo is now slated to direct.