Like a committed doctor working on a patient who keeps flat lining, Paramount just won’t give up on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and has now hired Eric Roth (The Insider/The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) to write a brand new draft of the script.
Part of the reason that the studio is so intent on making it is the fact that Jim Carrey remains committed to star as Robert Ripley, the newspaper columnist who became internationally famous after chronicling the world’s strangest places, people and events. But while his work eventually led to attractions springing up around the world, Ripley struggled with the concept of appreciating the people he wrote about as more than just the latest fodder for his newspaper column.
There’s also the small matter of the money that has been poured into the film, which was achingly close to production back in 2007 with Tim Burton directing and Carrey in the lead, only for things to shut down when the actor came up with some fresh ideas for the script that Burton liked. Writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski did their best to crank out the changes without too much delay, but by then Burton begun work on **Sweeney Todd **and the momentum was never quite regained.
Next up to try to revive the project were Chris Columbus and Master and Commander writer John Collee, but that didn’t even make it out of development.
So now Roth, who scooped an Oscar for Forrest Gump and has worked on several high-profile biopic-flavoured projects, is the man that studio executives are hoping will get the script to a place where a new director can come in and finally shoot the thing. You’ll pardon us if, given the history of the movie, we don’t hold our breath on that front just yet…