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The fledgling screenwriter team of Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio made their film debut with a rewrite of "Meet the Fockers" that moved the "Meet the Parents" sequel close to the starting line. Now "Fockers" helmer Jay Roach has come aboard to produce the scribes' spec "Smother," which Di Meglio hopes to direct.

Roach and his Everyman prexy Jennifer Perini will exec produce and locate a financier for "Smother," a comedy about a mother who leaves her husband after 30 years of marriage and shows up on the doorstep of her newlywed son. They plan to cast it and then set it up.

After making a dozen short films, Rasmussen and Di Meglio got a Sundance bow for one of them, "Fits and Starts." That got them repped by UTA and Mosaic, which sent "Smother" to Perini. She brought them in to meet Roach.

"Jay said he'd read the script and said he wished he could put some of it into 'Fockers,'�" Di Meglio said. "The following Monday, they called and said, 'Welcome aboard.' We got to rewrite that film as our first project, which was way beyond our wildest dreams. And Jay has been a good mentor and a wealth of ideas on 'Smother,' and is helping to get the financing and talent together."

Roach is moving close to a production start on the sequel, setting Dustin Hoffman to play the father of Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and bearing down on an actress to play mother Focker. He said the contributions the scribes made on the rewrite helped get the project close to where he wanted it to be.