Looking back at Meet the Parents as franchise sets up a surprise return

Sometimes, franchise returns catch you by surprise. Nobody could've expected the report this week that Universal is working on a revival of the Meet the Parents trilogy, which concluded with Little Fockers back in 2010. But that's exactly what's happening, with Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro in talks to return, along with co-stars Teri Polo and Blythe Danner.

From a commercial perspective, it's easy to understand why Universal wants to pull the trigger on more of the franchise. The three previous films have grossed a combined $1.16bn (£911m) worldwide and it's definitely true that enough time has passed for there to be a strong nostalgic pull for people returning to the world of Greg Focker and his fractious relationship with his wife's family.

That nostalgia is also in place behind the camera with John Hamburg — co-writer of all three previous movies — on board to pen the script for this new instalment. Jay Roach, who produced all three movies and directed the first two, will be a producer — though it's not clear yet who will be directing.

The first film, released in 2000, was a remake of a little-known independent film from the early 1990s. Bizarrely, it was Steven Soderbergh who first brought the movie to the attention of Universal Studios. He eventually dropped out to make Out of Sight, at which point Jay Roach — riding high off the success of Austin Powers — was sounded out as a potential director.

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Universal had concerns that the relatively inexperienced Roach could handle a less cartoony script. “I wasn’t able to convince people to let me do it and in the meantime I sent it to somebody at Spielberg’s company," Roach told Yahoo Entertainment in 2020.

Steven Spielberg was very interested and, soon, Roach was off making the disappointing sports comedy Mystery, Alaska. That opened the door for Spielberg to direct and he managed to snare Jim Carrey — then at the peak of his box office powers — to play the lead role of Greg Focker. But that version of the film just wasn't to be in the end.

“Steven admitted to me that he got nervous," said Roach. "He wasn’t sure about making this type of comedy and got cold feet. That left Jim Carrey – and it was Jim who pulled me back in.” Carrey soon fell by the wayside too, but Roach was able to pull off a major coup by getting Ben Stiller to play Greg and, even more importantly, Robert De Niro to send up his tough guy persona as retired CIA agent Jack Byrnes.

Both De Niro and Stiller had an impact on the script, with Stiller entirely improvising a plane scene and De Niro coming up with the idea for the famous scene in which Jack gives his potential future son-in-law a polygraph test.

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Once the film was in the can, though, a new fight came around with the Motion Picture Association of America. They weren't happy with the surname Focker — an idea that came from Carrey — and suggested that the repetition of the name was likely to garner the film a restrictive R rating unless they could provide evidence from the real world. "We had to find people who actually had the surname Focker, with that spelling and pronunciation,” said Roach.

With that PG-13 rating secured, Meet the Parents was an enormous hit. It finished off 2000 as the year's seventh highest-grossing film, ahead of the first X-Men movie. Given that sort of success, a sequel was inevitable. Meet the Fockers added Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand to the already A-list ensemble as Greg's idiosyncratic parents.

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Meet the Fockers also became the seventh highest-grossing film of its year, out-earning the likes of Brad Pitt epic Troy and the animated comedy Shark Tale. Little Fockers, in 2010, wasn't quite the same level of box office success — disappointing really given the fact both Stiller and De Niro were paid $20m (£15.7m) for their work. Critical reviews weren't great either and Jessica Alba won a Razzie for her supporting performance.

Rather than heed Greg's advice that you can "milk anything with nipples", Universal opted to wait before squeezing more cash out of the franchise. Now, the best part of 25 years after the first film, the Focker and Byrnes clans are set to return and we all want a place in the circle of trust.

Meet the Parents 4 does not yet have a confirmed release date.