Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Renée Zellweger’s fourth film as the much-loved-yet-shambolic diarist, made £11.8m in its first four days after its release on Thursday.

It beat the rom-com record previously held by the second Bridget Jones film, Edge of Reason, which took £10m in 2004 – although that figure would be worth more today with inflation.

The new film proved more popular than Captain America: Brave New World in the UK this weekend. The new Marvel film dominated box offices in North America – where Bridget Jones is not getting a cinema release.

The movie has gone straight to streaming in the US via the Peacock platform.

The Telegraph’s film critic Robbie Collin told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row that was because Americans “don’t care about Bridget” and that the character – created by British writer Helen Fielding – remains “an extremely local concern”.

However, Bridget did also top the weekend box office rankings in countries including Poland, the Netherlands and Norway, Universal said.

Mad About the Boy’s first weekend in the UK and Ireland was the biggest of the year so far, but was below the openings registered by blockbusters like Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked and Moana 2 in 2024.

The fourquel finds the titular hero now a widowed single mother, navigating the challenges of parenthood, work and modern dating.

She finds herself re-entering the dating world and must choose between a younger man she has fallen for (Leo Woodall) and her son’s science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Hugh Grant reprises his role, as does Emma Thompson.

While fans flocked to see it, the Guardian’s film critic Pete Bradshaw was not impressed, awarding two stars in his review.

He noted how there were “giant laughs for Hugh Grant” but that the “weepie sequel is strangely dazed”.

“With the exception of Grant and Thompson, really all of the actors are phoning (or rather voice-noting) it in, though this is a function of the material,” he wrote.

However, the Independent awarded four stars, with reviewer Clarisse Loughrey calling it “vulnerable, honest and very funny”.

She said director Michael Morris “deals with Bridget’s combative love life with far more care and subtlety than first sequel The Edge of Reason ever did”.

She added: “When it comes to Mad About the Boy, it’s less that Bridget Jones has finally matured, and more that she’s shown us how human she really is.”