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Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro reunite, tease ‘Meet the Parents 4'
Wanna feel old, Focker? Meet the Parents is turning 25 this October, and to mark the occasion, the cast — including Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, and Teri Polo — and director Jay Roach reunited at the Tribeca Film Festival over the weekend for a Q&A after an anniversary screening of the comedy.
And while the original movie was the night's main topic, the recently announced fourth movie in the series seemed to be on everyone's mind. Last month, it was announced that Academy Award nominee Ariana Grande would be joining the cast.
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"I can't really talk too much, I guess, at this point about the movie," Stiller. "But the character [Grande is] playing is — she's going to be really, really funny and kind of the whole engine of the new movie. So it's exciting."
"The script is really fun," De Niro said. "I'm looking forward to it."
"I fell in love with that script, the first film script … because imagining what it's like when you care so much about winning the approval of someone, and you're right away going to start screwing it up, and the harder you try the worse you're going to make it," said Roach, who is returning to produce the fourth movie. "And I think that's what [writer John Hamburg] has come up with again, and that's what you always need. That predicament is everything in a story. And I think in this one, John found a really great new predicament. I think everybody's going to love squirming through it, just like this."
The film will be the first entry in the series since 2010's Little Fockers, which saw Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand returning as the parents of Stiller's Greg Focker. That film went on to gross $310 million at the worldwide box office, but that total marked a low-point for the series and didn't help with the less-than-enthusiastic reviews.
But at Tribeca, the original Meet the Parents received a warm reception, something that Stiller called out during the talk afterward. "It's so much fun to hear laughter in a theater with comedy that's 25 years old," he said. "It still works."
The film's lasting legacy has had some downside, however. "When someone yells 'Focker!' on the street, it doesn't necessarily feel respectful," Stiller said.
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