Austin Powers in Goldmember

The third Austin Powers film, directed again by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers with Michael McCullers, sent Austin to 1975. Dr. Evil's plan, unveiled from a lair behind the Hollywood Sign, is to partner with Johan van der Smut, a gold-obsessed Dutchman who lost his genitalia in a smelting accident and goes by Goldmember, and use a tractor beam to drag a meteor into Earth. Austin's spy father Nigel Powers (Michael Caine, in a part modeled on his own Harry Palmer) is kidnapped, so Austin follows the trail to Studio 69, a New York roller disco, and reunites with Foxxy Cleopatra, an undercover FBI agent played by Beyoncé Knowles in a part that parodies Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones. Myers played four roles: Austin, Dr. Evil, Goldmember and Fat Bastard, now a sumo wrestler in Tokyo. The finale reveals that Austin and Dr. Evil are brothers and that the doctor's real name is Dougie.

The cameos were the event. The opening sequence turns the story into a Hollywood blockbuster called Austinpussy, with Tom Cruise as Austin, Kevin Spacey as Dr. Evil, Danny DeVito as Mini-Me, Gwyneth Paltrow as Dixie Normous and, by the end, John Travolta as Goldmember. Britney Spears turns up as a Fembot in the credits, the Osbournes appear as themselves, Fred Savage is the mole called Number 3, and Scott Evil finally gives his father the sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.

MGM, which distributes the Bond films, took legal action over the title, and for a while "Goldmember" vanished from the trailers and posters. New Line prepared replacements, among them License to Shag, Live and Let Shag, You Only Shag Thrice and Never Say Member Again, before the dispute was settled on the condition that the film run trailers for Die Another Day and The Two Towers. It opened on July 26, 2002, to $73.1 million, the biggest opening for a spoof, for a comedy (over Rush Hour 2) and for the month of July, a record that stood until Spider-Man 2. It closed at $213.3 million domestic and about $297 million worldwide, seventh for the year in North America.

Reviews landed in the middle. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 52 percent, with a consensus that the structure is a mess but there are enough inspired bits to entertain, and Variety's Todd McCarthy felt the swinging-sixties recycling act was "now feeling a bit past its zeitgeist prime." Myers won the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance after losing with the first two films, and lost Best Villain to the girl from The Ring. A fourth film has been "coming" since 2005; Verne Troyer died in 2018, and in June 2026 Myers answered a question about it with a one-word yes.