Is A Bruce Almighty Sequel With Jim Carrey Still Happening?
It's astonishing to think what an enormous hit Tom Shadyac's film "Bruce Almighty" was when it came out back in 2003. Jim Carrey played Bruce, a mid-level TV reporter who is selfish and a little disappointed with his job. When a rival named Evan (Steve Carell) is promoted above him, Bruce wails to God that life is unfair. Astonishingly, God Almighty (Morgan Freeman) appears to Bruce in order to give him a lesson. For one week, and limited to only a small portion of Buffalo, New York, Bruce will be given the infinite power of the Divine, teaching him that being God isn't as easy as all that. Bruce uses his Godly powers for petty, personal things like parting traffic and increasing the bust size of his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston).
Naturally, Bruce's cavalier use of power — and his lazy acumen when it comes to answering prayers — leads to chaos. He breaks his girlfriend's heart. He is humbled. Bruce goes back to being a mere human, helping people through non-divine means. "Bruce Almighty" is a cute, light, semi-funny morality tale for a Saturday afternoon. It does very little to address actual issues of faith or morality, never rising above the realm of "palatable." This is no Ingmar Bergman meditation on God's frustrating silence.
But "Bruce Almighty" made an overwhelming $484 million at the global box office, making it Carrey's biggest hit in a career full of them (even "Batman Forever" only made $336 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation). In 2007, Shadyac and Carell returned — without Carrey — in an effort to capitalize on the film's success with "Evan Almighty," a Noah's Ark riff that sunk at the box office (tee-hee).
However, a third film was also planned. It was to be called "Brucifer," and it would have featured Carrey taking on the powers of Satan. But is that movie still in the works? Let's take a closer look.
Brucifer
A third "Almighty" movie was first announced in 2012, although the content or title of the film hadn't been made public yet. /Film reported that Jarrad Paul, Andrew Mogel, and Nicholas Stoller were to write the screenplay. But Shadyac was not confirmed to return as director. In 2016, Freeman also expressed interest in playing God again, especially if Carrey was attached. He felt about "Evan Almighty" the same way most audiences seemed to, namely, that it didn't count as "official" sequel.
Further word on "Brucifer" wouldn't come for another six years, which was a pretty clear sign that the project had died.
In 2022, however, the writers of the original "Bruce Almighty," Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, and Steve Oedekerk, revealed some of the details of the movie they had scripted that, they lament, never got made. According to O'Keefe, who spoke with SyFy Wire, "It was going to be the Trials of Job, essentially. [...] The world had not gone [Bruce's] 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." Bruce knew God existed — indeed, he was God for a spell — and his life is still falling apart. Knowing God to be unjust, uncaring, or less than all-powerful, Bruce was to turn to Satan for guidance. Hence "Brucifer."
O'Keefe noted that Morgan Freeman would play the Devil, or, failing that, Carrey would play the Devil opposite himself. Carrey, incidentally, already played a Devil-like Death in an obscure 1991 comedy called "High Strung," written by and starring Steve Oedekerk.
Zombies and Satan
According to the SyFy article, Carrey was very fond of a Satan-themed "Bruce Almighty" sequel. It seemed, however, that the production would be enormous. Koren recalled, "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."
Koren also shared a few more details of "Brucifer," which included the death of Grace, the Jennifer Aniston character. Over the course of the movie, however, she would be resurrected by demonic necromancy and would spend a portion of the film as a zombie. Aniston has, looking over her résumé, never played an undead creature before.
With "Brucifer" tabled, Koren noted that a TV series spinoff to "Bruce Almighty" is not out of the realm. He said that an early draft of "Bruce" was far broader and more slapstick-oriented than the final draft, comparing it to a Mel Brooks film, and figured a TV series could be derived from that. The premise would be, it seems, that there is a very, very small portion of New York City — about three blocks — where a random human gets to be God. Whether the God character would rotate, or if it would be the same person each week, was not revealed.
"Brucifer" was abandoned in favor of "Evan Almighty," the proposed TV show was never put into production, and any further sequels remain unnamed. Perhaps there will be no additional "Almighty" follow-ups. At least for now, you'd have to pray for them to happen (or not).