Some big names have picked up high-profile projects this week.

THR’s Risky Biz Blog is reporting that Jessica Alba is in negotiations to join Little Fockers, the third installment in the franchise launched 9 long years ago with Meet the Parents. Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, and Owen Wilson will all return, with Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand also rumored to be re-joining the gang. As the title suggests, the new film will center on the hijinks that ensue when Stiller and Polo’s characters become parents. Paul Weitz will direct the movie, and Alba will play an “attractive pharmaceutical rep whose looks wreak havoc on male characters in the story.” And not just in the story, it seems, but also the audience. Universal appears to be betting that adding a young, attractive starlet like Alba to the cast will lure some members of the young male demographic they’re sorely lacking into theaters. We’ll see if it works when the movie hits screens next year.

Hit the jump to see what Jamie Foxx and Hugh Jackman have cooking.

Jamie Foxx is joining Due Date, the Todd Phillips-directed comedy already starring Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Galifianakis, and Michelle Monaghan. Downey plays a “high-strung father-to-be forced to hitch a ride with a college slacker (Galifianakis)” on a cross-country trek so he can make it to the birth of his first child. Foxx will play “Downey’s longtime pal, who once dated his wife (Monaghan) and secretly keeps in touch with her.” How he stays Downey’s longtime friend without openly keeping in touch with his wife — you’d figure old pals would naturally interact with each others’ spouses — is a mystery to me. In any case, I’m happy to see Foxx returning to comedy. Did you realize it’s been 5 years since he last had a comedy in theaters? Granted his comedic turns haven’t always had the best results, but dude is funny — I’m looking forward to seeing him play for laughs again.

Lastly, Hugh Jackman is in talks to join Shawn Levy’s Real Steel. The actor would play a father who forges a new relationship with his estranged son when they team up to repair and rehabilitate a robotic boxer in a future where boxing matches between humans have been outlawed. The project is intended to be a family adventure, a genre Jackman hasn’t tackled before (at least in live-action form). His recent projects have been kind of hit-or-miss, and despite the box office success of the X-Men films, Jackman occupies one of those weird Hollywood spaces where he’s really famous and mostly well-liked, but never really sold a movie before (you can make a case for Wolverine, but how much of that was from the built-in fan base?). Let’s see if this can become the first film for Jackman to make a case that he’s a bona fide movie star.

Tags: Due Date, Hugh Jacman, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Alba, Little Fockers, Paul Weitz, Real Steel, Shawn Levy, Todd Phillips