While we know that Jim Carrey can kill it in dramatic roles (see: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), the man made his name as one of the greatest physical comedians of our time (see: The Mask). So I was thrilled to hear that Carrey is going to be exercising his peculiar comedic sensibilities once again with direction from one Larry Charles, director extraordinaire of Borat, Bruno, and several of the better episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage, for which he also wrote.
Carrey will headline Pierre Pierre as a “self-indulgent, lazy, French nihilist who is transporting a stolen Mona Lisa from Paris to London,” who along the way “comes to love his home country again.”
In 2008, the movie’s screenplay ranked 11th on Hollywood’s famed ‘Black List’, which ranks scripts based on an annual poll of around 150 development executives and other high-level assistants. Fox Searchlight paid around a million dollars upfront for the screenplay, from newcomers Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Setoff.
Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) was originally attached to direct, but the project fell to Charles when Reitman dropped out. Now, Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Steve Tisch, as well as Category 5’s Brian Sher, are producing the flick with a planned $20 million budget.
It sounds like a winning combination of talents to me. Carrey is just the kind of comedic actor to make this movie work: his ability to take an otherwise ordinary scene and make it somehow iconic (see video below!) puts him in a class all by himself. Well, except perhaps Sacha Baron Cohen, whom Larry Charles last worked with on Borat and Bruno. Hopefully the director will find a way to build Pierre Pierre around Carrey’s strengths the same way he did for Cohen.
Source: Slashfilm
