Owen Wilson will be back for Meet The Parents 4, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Wilson appeared as the ex-fiancé of Teri Polo’s character in all the previous installments of the comedy series, so it was only right that he return. He joins stars Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro for the next chapter, in which the son of Stiller and Polo’s characters “gets engaged to a ball-busting woman”—played by Oscar nominee Ariana Grande—”who seems all wrong for him.”
Wilson actually leaked this news himself a few days ago in a funny bit from Billy Bush’s podcast Hot Mics, which in this scenario is quite aptly named. Asked if he and Stiller had any new collaborations in the works, Wilson joked that the new Meet The Parents would be “the 37th time Ben and I have worked together,” only to get reprimanded by his publicist. “It hasn’t been announced?” Wilson asked incredulously. “How could that not have been—? But we’re supposed to be doing it even later this summer, I think.” (You can check out the clip below—the question comes around the 12:55 mark.)
Wilson and Stiller have indeed joined forces frequently over the years. “The first film he cast me in was The Cable Guy,” Wilson explained to The Talks in 2016. “When he saw Bottle Rocket, around that time, he wrote the nicest letter to me saying how much he loved the movie—and that meant a great deal because no one had gone to see Bottle Rocket—saying that he hoped we might work together on something, some day… That sure came to pass!”
Wilson shared that their friendship hasn’t changed much since those early days, saying they’re “still laughing at the same things” they did when they “first became friends, walking around New York.” He said, “[When] you are on set, Ben always is open, always encouraging new ideas. Ben doesn’t have a background as a stand-up comedian either; his energy is not this person who will sit around telling jokes, waiting for April Fool’s Day. The stuff that we tend to laugh at is the kind of failures and shortcomings that we see in each other and ourselves.” Hopefully there are more laughs to come with Meet The Parents 4.
