Mr Bean returns

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. And it’s not a very late April Fool’s joke: there really is a sequel to 1997’s Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie in the works.

It’s not exactly a surprise - rumours of a sequel swirled as soon as the original film became a big hit. And with that movie’s final worldwide gross hitting somewhere around $240 million, there was always going to be someone willing to take another shot. But why it has taken this long to come to fruition is anyone’s guess. We’d posit the idea that Rowan Atkinson had grown a little sick of the character and had wanted to focus on other things (such as Johnny English).

But now he and Working Title films are bringing near-silent rubber-faced lunatic Bean back and the man behind the camera will be Steve Bendelack, who made his film debut with 2005’s The League Of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse. He’ll be working from a script by Robin Driscoll and Hamish McColl (Driscoll co-wrote the original Bean movie), which finds our hapless “hero” holidaying in the South of France. His usual brand of mayhem somehow leads to an unscheduled screening of his video diary at the Cannes Film Festival. So festivalgoers: be on the lookout for Atkinson and co. You never know when Bean will pop up to cause havoc.