Jeff Bridges Hints At Lebowski’s Return In Twitter Video

Jeff Bridges sent out a Twitter message on Thursday, one hinting at the forthcoming return of one of his most beloved characters — Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski. The Dude became a pop-cultural icon in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 cult hit The Big Lebowski.

In the tweet, Bridges posted the line “Can’t be living in the past, man. Stay tuned,” along with a 15-second clip of himself, in costume as The Dude, as music from the film plays. At the end of the clip, a date appears — February 3, 2019.

Is this a hint of a Big Lebowski sequel? Probably not. The date posted at the end is also the date of this year’s Super Bowl, which seems to hint that Bridges will be reprising his Big Lebowski character for a Super Bowl commercial this year.

The bottom of the screen at the end of the spot includes a copyright, dated 2019, for Universal City Studios. It’s possible the commercial is for that entity, although Universal Pictures owns the home entertainment rights to the 1998 film. The video has accrued 63,000 views on Twitter in the first hour since having been posted.

Bridges appeared — albeit not as The Dude — in a Super Bowl commercial for the website-making service Squarespace back in 2015, per YouTube.

While not quite a hit at the time of its release in March of 1998, The Big Lebowski soon developed a cult following, one which led to fan conventions and festivals. In the film, set in 1991, Bridges played a burned-out ex-hippie in Los Angeles — one who’s drawn into a kidnapping plot when he’s confused with a millionaire businessman (David Huddleston) who is also named Jeffrey Lebowski. John Goodman co-starred as Walter Sobchak, The Dude’s temperamental Vietnam veteran friend, and the film also starred Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, and Julianne Moore.

Would an ex-hippie like The Dude agree to appear in a commercial for a brand? That’s a question for fans of the film and the character to parse, although it’s worth noting that Bridges doesn’t look especially different in the spot than he did in the film, which came out 21 years ago.

Big Lebowski star Jeff Bridges reprising role of The Dude in mystery project https://t.co/6cdSocWhgc

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) January 24, 2019

There has never been a sequel to The Big Lebowski, or any other Coen Brothers film for that matter. A 2019 film, Going Places, represents a spinoff of Lebowski, centered around Turturro’s character of Jesus Quintana. The Coens are not associated with the film, which Turturro directed, although they did give him permission to use the character that they created, per Indiewire.

Jeff Bridges is not in that film, one which co-stars Bobby Cannavale and Audrey Tautou — with Pete Davidson playing a supporting role.