Not every film is going to be a success, and Ben Stiller is more than happy to admit his failures.
Just hours after releasing the trailer for the newest installment of his cult-favorite Meet the Parents series, Stiller, 60, told fans they could skip some of his earlier work.
While promoting his upcoming sequel, Focker In-Law, at CinemaCon on Wednesday, Stiller replied to a fan on X who asked whether she needed to watch all the Focker movies to understand the new one starring Ariana Grande.
“No! But I stand by the first two,” Stiller replied.
Another fan asked Stiller the astute follow-up, “So what went wrong with Little Fockers? You worked on it.”
“We always try. Fully,” the Zoolander actor said.
The original 2000 film Meet the Parents starred Stiller as George Focker, a nurse who has a nightmarish experience meeting his girlfriend’s parents (played by Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner). The film became an instant classic and grossed more than $330 million at the box office with a budget of just $50 million.
The 2004 sequel, Meet the Fockers, which brought in Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Stiller’s on-screen parents, followed up on its predecessor’s success, earning more than $550 million and instantly demanded a third in the series.
And yet, despite its $300 million box office return, Little Fockers is considered something of a flop. Barbara Streisand and Jessica Alba both received Razzie nominations for Worst Supporting Actress of the year, which Alba won—or lost, depending on your outlook. There would be a nearly two-decade gap between Little Fockers and the fourth installment in the series.
Stiller, whose lengthy filmography includes numerous sequels, has also lamented the failures of other of his blockbuster franchises.
He was completely “blindsided” by the vitriol over the follow-up to one of his most beloved original films, Zoolander.
“I thought everybody wanted this,” Stiller said of the film he directed in a 2024 interview. “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f---ed this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.’”
The 2016 sequel was dead on arrival and barely recouped its budget in theaters.
“It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know it was that bad?’” Stiller continued, noting that it made him question his humor for a long time afterward.
It took more than 15 years for the next Fockers sequel to be announced. The new film, which stars Grande, 32, as a former FBI hostage negotiator who dates Stiller’s son, promises to be a return to form.
Stiller, who takes on the grumpy father-in-law role in the new film, said he’s “the new sort of De Niro of the franchise” during the film’s presentation on Wednesday.
“Don’t say that. It’s very disrespectful,” De Niro, 82, quipped back seemingly in character.
Focker In-Law will premiere in theaters on November 25.
