Robert De Niro will be back for the third Fockers movie, Little Fockers. The word comes from Variety, where they say his production company is about to start work on developing the movie. In related news, Universal has begun construction on a giant, Scrooge McDuck-like money bin on their backlot.

Apparently they want everyone back for movie number three. By everyone I don’t just mean Stiller, Polo, Danner, and De Niro who starred in both films. They also want back franchise newcomers Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand. Since the title is Little Fockers, it’s probably also safe to assume they’ll be hiring an army of babies for Ben Stiller to endanger with his incompetence.

The strange thing is that though they’re hot to get the cast back, they don’t seem to be interested in bringing back Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg to write another script. They wrote the first two, but they’ve hired Larry Stuckey to write this one. Stuckey, at least as far as IMDB can tell, has never written anything. He produced Meet the Fockers, but that seems to be where his resume begins and ends.

It’s sexy for film critics to bash the Focker franchise, but I’ve always supported it. Both films are funny in their own way, though by the second I think it became pretty clear that they were just repeating the same jokes over and over again. It worked for two movies, I really don’t see it working for a third. Maybe that’s why they’ve brought in someone else to write the script. If they’re planning to keep this thing going, Fockers needs a fresh take.