It was inevitable.

Mike Myers had a small part in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," and he's reprised his role as Shrek for both a sequel and a TV special in the last few years, but as far as live-action movies where he's the star, the last one was the disastrous "The Love Guru" in 2008, and the response to that nearly drove him out of the business.

Myers is a very particular talent, a guy who likes to workshop a character for a while before he actually makes a movie.  He has not made that many films, all things considered, and a few times over the course of his career, he has actually pulled the plug on things that probably could have gotten made because he didn't feel they were ready.  That happened most famously with "Sprockets," the feature-film version of one of his SNL characters.  I liked the script he co-wrote with Mike McCullers, but Myers bowed out just before it was supposed to start, killing the film in the process.

His most successful bigscreen character, of course, is the hyper-horny snaggletoothed secret agent Austin Powers, and there has been much talk about the possibility of a fourth film in that series over the last few years.  For a while, there was talk of a Dr. Evil spin-off film, but I think all of those weird characters need to share the same universe.  Taking one of them into a solo film just seems odd.  Whatever the case, we haven't' seen the character since 2002's "Goldmember."

That's about to change, as HitFix can now confirm that Mike Myers just closed his deal to return to the role.  Yep.  "Austin Powers 4" is coming, officially.

No word yet on who will be directing.  I would hope Jay Roach returns as well, since I think a lot of the kick of the films is the '60s pop aesthetic, and Roach has been a big part of that since day one.  There's also no word yet on a proposed storyline, but I will certainly start digging to see what I can come up with.

Right now, all that's sure is that someone's going to get shagged, and for the first time in a decade, Austin Powers fans are going to have new material to get excited about.  We'll update you as more details become available.

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