Comedian Ariana Grande, known for her beloved hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live and her Oscar-nominated comic turn as Galinda in the Wicked films, will star in Meet the Parents 4, per The Hollywood Reporter. The film, set for November 25, 2026, will follow Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and Pam Byrnes’s (Teri Polo) son, who brings home a
“ball-busting” fiancée who isn’t right for him, per THR. Grande will reportedly play the fiancée. Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, who played the Byrnes patriarch in the original trilogy, have signed onto the film, with both Polo and Blythe Danner, who plays De Niro’s wife in the films, expected to return, though their contracts aren’t yet finalized. Their son, Henry, appeared as a 5-year-old in the 2010 film Little Fockers, played by Colin Baiocchi, who hasn’t acted since 2011 and could be replaced. John Hamburg, a co-writer on all the previous films, will direct.
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Meet the Parents (2000), Meet the Fockers (2004), and Little Fockers (2010) collectively earned over $1 billion in the box office, per Box Office Mojo. The new installment will be Grande’s first film role since starring in Wicked — which itself scored $755 million in box-office returns. Grande previously told Las Culturistas that she wanted to continue in comedy. “I love acting,” she said on the podcast on November 6. “I love musical theater — reconnecting with this part of myself who started in musical theater and who loves comedy. And it heals me to do that, finding roles to use these parts of myself, and put them in little homes and characters.” Given that the Wicked films will have both come out Thanksgiving, this will mark three Novembers in a row with Grande putting out a movie over that holiday weekend. She’s putting the “thank” in “thank goodness!”
