Mr Bean... and gone?

Rowan Atkinson has said in an interview with The Daily Record newspaper that he is unlikely to play Mr Bean again. When asked whether the rumors that the new Mr Bean film will indeed be the last time the comic will play the world famous character, Atkinson responded: "Probably. Never say never, but at the moment it feels highly unlikely. I cannot envisage a good scenario in which I would play him again, but you never know."

Atkinson was being interviewed to promote Mr Bean's Holiday, the new film. The movie sees Mr Bean heading to the South of France for a simple holiday in the sun. His voyage from London to the Riviera soon transcends into one of mischief and mayhem though as he inadvertently creates havoc wherever he goes. It culminates in an unscheduled and riotous screening of his own video diary at the Cannes Film Festival.

Atkinson has rarely played the oddball character since the last Mr Bean film was released ten years ago. The actor has been providing the voiceover for the animated series in the meantime but it wasn't until recently that he's put on the tweed jacket again. The comic recently took part in a new Mr Bean sketch for Comic Relief night (video) and has also appeared in character on the new Dame Edna chatshow.

Talking about the new movie Atkinson said: "We certainly never planned a sequel. There was always a desire for a sequel that we never satisfied because I wanted to do something different because by the time we made the movie in 1997, I'd been doing Mr. Bean fairly solidly for about eight years and I thought it was about time I did something else. That's why I did Johnny English, the comedy spy movie, four years ago. So that became the next project and took three years to get out. Since then there have been a few other distractions, so it's taken this long to get round to it."

At first the sequel movie was going to be a romantic comedy called Mr and Mrs Bean but then the idea of Mr. Bean's dream about a beach in the south of France, with the film following his journey, was shaped.

It's not surprising that another movie has been made - the first grossed an impressive $250million worldwide. Mr Bean's Holiday is released in the UK on Friday. Here's the trailer...

You can read the full interview with Rowan Atkinson on The Daily Record Website

p.s. Sorry for the terrible pun in the headline - it had to be done!