Jim Carrey Wants A Sequel To His Best Comedy
Jim Carrey is still hoping to make Brucifer, a sequel to Bruce Almighty.
Legendary comedian Jim Carrey almost starred in Brucifier, a follow-up to Bruce Almighty where instead of the powers of God, Bruce received the powers of the Devil. Reporting from Syfy confirms that the star and his team loved the wild concept of the movie. Despite having one of the best comedic actors of all time on board, Brucifier is stuck in the one place that renders even the Devil powerless: Hollywood boardrooms.
Bruce Almighty screenwriters Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe, pitched Jim Carrey on the concept of Brucifer in 2010. Beyond the high-brow plot of Carrey’s character going from God to the Devil, a major stumbling block came from the tepid reception to the previous movie in the nascent franchise, Evan Almighty. Starring Steve Carrell as his character from Bruce Almighty, the movie was a critical and financial failure, not even recovering its production budget in box office revenue.
Even Almighty losing money for Universal Pictures denied the world Jim Carrey as Brucifier. The plot for the canned movie involved Bruce’s wife Grace, played by Jennifer Aniston, to pass away and cause Bruce to lose his faith in God. Beelzebub, played by Morgan Freeman or Carrey in a cost-saving move, would then tempt Bruce with a different set of powers to create the world Bruce felt he deserved after all he had done.
While the proposed sequel would deal with serious issues, it would have remained a comedy. O’Keefe explains the premise as being the Trials of Job, including Aniston, one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood, coming back as a decaying zombie for most of the movie. Jim Carrey’s Brucifier would, as in the first movie, end up learning a valuable life lesson from his brush with divinity and everything would end up in a less-dark place then audiences would expect from a film about the Devil.
The original Bruce Almighty was also a major risk for the studio, as it was a film about God. Similar to the proposed Jim Carrey finetuned the Brucifier script, the first version of Bruce Almighty was about a man that had God-like powers over just his three-block neighborhood. Later re-writes expanded the scope of the script to provide the Ace Ventura star the opportunity to find Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse and relocate the moon for a romantic evening.
After Universal Pictures passed on the sequel, Koren and O’Keefe shelved the concept, though the two writers and Jim Carrey still have some interest in bringing Brucifier to the big screen. The group of comedy writers managed to thread the needle with Bruce Almighty in making a film about God that appealed to everyone of all denominations or no denomination. With the recent show Lucifer giving sympathy to the Devil, lightning could strike twice and Carrey’s turn as the fallen angel might someday still be another box office smash.
Today, Bruce Almighty has found a second life as one of Peacock’s top streaming comedies. Jim Carrey as Brucifier, despite interest from all parties, might still not happen due to the star expressing a desire to retire from acting. With his latest role as Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 giving the star his largest box office success, maybe the temptation of a bigger, better box office could lure the star back into the studio.
