For decades, Barbra Streisand has been a major name on movie posters and soundtracks. Today, she makes headlines for a different reason: she walked away from a new film after learning the studio underpaid her compared to her male costars. She draws a quiet but powerful line in the sand on fair pay.
Her words are blunt and honest: if the studio wants her back for the new sequel, Focker-In-Law, “they’d have to pay me a lot of money” after what happened before.
This is not just a contract issue. It is a woman with one of the strongest legacies in film and music, refusing to shrug off old unfairness. Her words are blunt and honest: if the studio wants her back for the new sequel, Focker-In-Law, it must pay her much more because of the past unfairness.
Meanwhile, Focker-In-Law has already wrapped filming, with Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner back, plus new star Ariana Grande stepping into a “very unique” role. The movie comes out in 2026, but without Streisand’s full return, insiders quietly worry the film could lose the spark that made Roz Focker unforgettable.
Barbra Streisand Makes Her Priorities Clear After Shocking Underpaid Remark
At the same time, Universal is not gambling blindly on the future of this comedy world. Streisand represents the historical fight for fair pay; Ariana Grande is the studio’s new, carefully crafted cornerstone. Before stepping onto the Focker-In-Law set, she had already proven she could carry a huge film as Glinda in Wicked: Part One, a massive musical prequel backed by Universal.
That big-screen leap, alongside Cynthia Erivo and director Jon M. Chu, showed she could blend heart, humor, and spectacle in a way studios now see as pure box office gravity for a global, cross-generational audience.
Wicked | Official Trailer
Barbra Streisand may be drawing a hard line on pay, and Ariana Grande may be the new star on the call sheet, but the franchise still lives or dies on one simple idea: Greg Focker trying—and failing—to impress Jack Byrnes. That first uncomfortable meeting, with the probing questions, the lie-detector tension, and every tiny mistake snowballing into chaos, is the blueprint.