Meet the Parents Expands with a Fourth Movie!

Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner are reportedly in early discussions to return for a fourth Meet the Parents movie, nearly 15 years after they last appeared together in 2010's Little Fockers.

While a director has not yet been confirmed, the screenplay will be written by John Hamburg, who has written all three previous films in the series. Hamburg also directed Little Fockers and is known for his work on films like Zoolander, Along Came Polly, Why Him, and Me Time.

Details about the plot are being kept under wraps, but it’s expected that Greg Focker (played by Stiller) will once again find himself in a stressful and comedic situation. The first film in the series, Meet the Parents (2000), follows Greg, a well-meaning but unlucky nurse, as he tries to win over his girlfriend Pam's (Polo) parents before proposing. Greg’s efforts to earn his future father-in-law James Byrnes's (De Niro) approval are thwarted by a series of mishaps, with James, a retired CIA agent, disapproving of Greg from the start.

The 2004 sequel, Meet the Fockers, introduced even more chaos when Greg’s parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, met the Byrnes family. The third film, Little Fockers (2010), took place 10 years after Greg married Pam, showing him still trying to prove himself to his father-in-law while juggling family life with two children.

The franchise has featured numerous other stars over the years, including Owen Wilson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jessica Alba, Laura Dern, and Kevin Hart.

In a recent interview on Hot Ones, Stiller shared an interesting behind-the-scenes story about the challenges the franchise faced with the MPAA (now the MPA) to get Meet the Fockers approved with the same family-friendly rating as the original film. The issue arose because the name "Focker" was thought to be too close to a curse word, but the filmmakers successfully proved that real-life Fockers exist.

The Meet the Parents franchise has been a major success, with the original film grossing over $330 million worldwide and becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 2000. Its sequels, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, have continued to draw large audiences, bringing the total franchise gross to over $1.13 billion globally.