The sequel BEGAN by killing off Jennifer Aniston…
Released in 2003, Bruce Almighty actually remains the biggest box office hit of Jim Carrey’s career.
Telling the story of a lowly news reported who is unhappy with his lot in life and constantly blaming God (here played by Morgan Freeman) for everything that goes wrong, God decides to give up and see if Bruce can do a better job as the all-seeing, all-knowing deity.
The movie went on to make over $484 million at the worldwide box office, so it was kind of surprising that there wasn’t a direct sequel… except there kind of was, but we’ll get to that.
Instead, at the premiere of the first movie, Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe, who co-wrote the first movie, pitched a sequel to producer Michael Bostick. The sequel’s brilliant title – Brucifier – gives an immediate insight as to the direction of the sequel.
The plot revolved around the death of Grace (Jennifer Aniston), and Bruce making a deal with the devil to bring her back to life.
Koren told SyFy Magazine the following during a recent interview:
“You tend to lose your faith when the world seems unfair, and that’s what got him. It came from a serious place, but we were gonna write it in a very friendly way. We certainly didn’t want to depress people. So I think that scared [the studio] a little bit, but to Jim’s credit, he totally understood that we were going to make a big comedy and thought everybody would connect with it.”
“It never quite worked out. It would have been another giant movie and I don’t think they wanted to do it. It just didn’t work out for some reason, but a lot of people loved it, including Jim [Carrey].”
Additionally, it turned out Carrey had some big ideas for where the sequel to go, with Koren adding:
“We had [Jennifer Aniston] come back as Jennifer Aniston. He said, ‘No, she has to look like a zombie first and then we’ll make her beautiful again.’ We thought that was brilliant.”
Ultimately, Bostick passed on the idea, and instead we got 2007’s Evan Almighty, which a spin-off sequel focusing on Steve Carrell’s character from the first movie.
At the time, it was the most expensive comedy ever made (it was eventually surpassed by Men In Black 3), but at the global box office, Evan Almighty made less than its $175 million budget.
But if Jim and everyone else involved would be up for it, we’re sure there would be plenty of fans who would get tickets for the opening weekend of Brucifier.
Meanwhile, Bruce Almighty is available to watch on Disney+ right now.
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