Universal Pictures
If you look through Jim Carrey’s filmography, you could argue that Bruce Almighty is the last “classic Carrey comedy” that the actor made, depending on how you feel about Fun with Dick and Jane and Yes Man.
It’s certainly one of the most successful films of his A-list career, as it made almost $500 million at the global box office, which would be unthinkable in today’s current movie market. Even Black Adam isn’t going t make that much money.
Given how much money the film racked up, it’s strange that Universal Pictures never made a direct sequel featuring Carrey (there was 2007’s Evan Almighty, although that Steve Carrell-starring film ultimately bombed). As it turns out, though, there were actually plans for a Carrey-led sequel that would’ve seen Bruce Nolan inherit the powers of Satan instead of God. The film would’ve been cheekily titled Brucifer, as well.
“His manager and him wanted to do Brucifer,” co-screenwriters Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe told Syfy Wire in a recent interview. “We went in and pitched it, but it never quite worked out, because it was later on … 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.”
The writers also detailed that Carrey’s character would be pushed toward the Devil following the death of his wife Grace, played by Jennifer Aniston.
“You tend to lose your faith when the world seems unfair, and that’s what got him,” Koren says. “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.”
“I remember when we pitched it, he was laughing his ass off,” Koren says. “Because we had her 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.” [via Syfy Wire]
As mentioned above, the studio did ultimately try to recreate the magic with Evan Almighty, although that film failed to even break even on its $175 million budget.