Pierce Brosnan reveals Mamma Mia 3 will answer question fans have been asking for decades

Pierce Brosnan has confirmed he hopes to make a third movie in the Mamma Mia franchise - and hinted that the next film could answer a decades-long mystery.

The former 007 actor, 72, played Sam Carmichael in the 2008 movie musical and its 2018 sequel. He is one of the three possible fathers of Amanda Seyfried’s character Sophie, alongside Colin Firth’s Harry and Stellan Skarsgård’s Bill.

It has long been rumored that there will be a third film in the series based on the music of Abba, with Deadline reporting last month that a further sequel is in development and pop star Sabrina Carpenter is being considered for a role.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Brosnan was asked whether he could share who he believes is Sophie’s biological father.

“I think you’ll have to wait for the next movie,” he responded. “I think leave that one right there. I know who it is, but I don’t want to be a killjoy.”

In a separate interview with British GQ, Brosnan added of the mooted sequel: “I want to do it, and I would like to think my fellow actors would all jump at it, I believe they would.”

The Drogheda-born actor, currently appearing in gangster drama MobLand, continued: “It's ironic because we watched episode nine of MobLand last week, and it's so intense. My wife said, ‘Okay, let's have a cup of tea.’

“She put the kettle on, and the next thing is we found this Abba documentary. It was very timely, and very refreshing, and very revealing… I heard songs in that documentary which were so poignant, and so beautiful. So I'd like think that we will have a Mamma Mia! 3.”

Last month, Brosnan defended his accent in MobLand after viewers and critics deemed it “utterly ridiculous”.

The actor argued that his performance as the fictional Conrad Harrigan — who is from Kerry on Ireland’s south west coast — required a broader Irish accent than his own.

“My own accent is very soft. Conrad’s accent is a million miles away from me,” he told Radio Times, adding that his voice training was based on a real accent and that he worked with a dialect coach.

“I told him that I needed a Kerry accent,” he said. “So he gave me the name of a man and I Googled the guy and that was it. It was a Kerry accent. And so, I just gave it full tilt.”

The “ridiculous” accents were only part of the problem for many critics who disliked MobLand. In The Independent’s two-star review of the program, Ed Power wrote: “Brosnan sounds like a leprechaun who has swapped his lucky charms for a crock of ketamine.”