While the hit 2003 comedy Bruce Almighty did eventually receive a sequel, the writers behind the original film had something else entirely in mind for what the future of the series was going to hold.
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In a recent interview with Syfy, Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe revealed their idea for Brucifer, the unmade sequel that would have seen Jim Carrey’s Bruce gaining the powers of the Devil rather than God. According to the pair, they pitched the sequel to producer Michael Bostick on the night of the original film’s premiere, but it simply never worked out.
“[Jim Carrey’s] manager and him wanted to do Brucifer,” Koren said. “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.”
Unlike the original film, Brucifer would have seen Bruce examining the darker side of powers following the death of his girlfriend (played by Jennifer Aniston). According to Koren, it “came from a serious place” but would have been written in a “very friendly way.”
“You tend to lose your faith when the world seems unfair, and that’s what got him,” said Koren. “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.”
The pair went further into their pitch for the film, revealing that Bruce would have used his Satanic powers to bring Aniston back from the dead, with Carrey even suggesting she return as a zombie first.
“I remember when we pitched it, [Jim] was laughing his ass off,” Koren said. “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.”
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“It was going to be the Trials of Job, essentially,” O’Keefe added. “The world had not gone his way since he was God. Everything was great for a while; he was married, and it all fell apart. He was once again questioning everything and then got a different way to solve things.”
Of course, instead of Brucifer, the sequel Evan Almighty ended up being made in 2007. The follow-up focused on Steve Carell’s Evan, who appeared in the original film. Unfortunately for those behind that, Evan Almighty was considered a flop by almost all metrics and never attained the success of its predecessor.
