Ashton in 'Love,' Babs Meets 'Fockers'

By Stephen M. Silverman

Tuesday January 27, 2004 01:45 AM EST

Newly established box-office star Ashton Kutcher, whose critically bashed "The Butterfly Effect" emerged as last weekend's No. 1 movie, will team with "Something's Gotta Give" costar Amanda Peet for the upcoming romantic comedy "A Lot Like Love," according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The trade paper, which also reports that director Nigel Cole ("Calendar Girls") will be behind the camera, says it took the casting of Peet to convince Kutcher to sign on to the project.

Kutcher, 25, and Peet, 31, will play longtime acquaintances who can no longer fight the attraction between them, says the Reporter. Shooting is scheduled to begin in April, while Kutcher is on a break from FOX's "That '70s Show."

In other casting news, Barbra Streisand, who has been absent from the big screen for eight years (since her less-than-well-received "The Mirror Has Two Faces"), is considering playing Ben Stiller's screen mother and Dustin Hoffman's screen wife in the upcoming comedy "Meet the Fockers," the Associated Press reports.

The new movie -- which will also reunite Teri Polo with her screen parents, Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner -- is the sequel to 2000's "Meet the Parents."

Streisand's husband, "The Reagans" actor James Brolin, 62, told TV's "Access Hollywood" that his wife has a copy of the "Fockers" script, and "I know she is reading it."