Believe it or not, but one of the following three statements is true:
a) Jim Carrey and Tim Burton’s on-off-on-off-jesus-will-they-make-their-minds-up project, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not is back on.
b) Screenwriter, Steve Oedekerk, who directed Carrey in that comedy classic, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, has been hired to retool the screenplay for a 2008 start
c) England – with the honourable exceptions of Monty Panesar and Kevin Pietersen – are utterly, utterly crap at cricket and should hang their heads in shame, and hand back their MBEs.
Actually, you can believe it or not, but all three statements were true. Yes, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which was shelved by Paramount when the budget looked like exceeding $150 million, has been put back on the Carrey and Burton to do lists.
On Burton’s, it’s just after ‘Make Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp’, ‘Pick Kids Up From School’ and ‘buy comb’ (under which has been scribbled, ‘what’s a comb?’. On Carrey’s it’s just about discernible under numerous drawings of the number 23.
Anyhoo… it’s good news for Carrey. The comedian has had a troubled time of it lately – believe it or not, but Ripley’s Believe It Or Not was his second big-budget project to be scrapped recently by pesky studio beancounters. Used Guys, a mooted sci-fi comedy with Ben Stiller, to be directed by Jay Roach, was t’other.
Believe it or not, but Ripley’s Believe It Or Not – a surreal fantasy based on the crazy life of explorer Richard Ripley, the guy immortalised in those eponymous mini-museums/stores you find dotted around seaside resorts – was shelved after Burton/Carrey brainstorming sessions, so close to the original start date of this autumn and coupled with an expensive shoot in China, meant that the script, originally by Burton’s Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, couldn’t be completed.
Alexander and 45 Points At Scrabble Boy have left the project, but they were today replaced by 23 Points At Scrabble Boy, Oedekerk, who has also written next summer's big comedy, Evan Almighty. China is still on the agenda for the shoot, and Paramount have targeted a 2009 release date.
Oh, and Scrabble fans, please don’t write in complaining about our estimates of Karaszewski and Oedekerk’s scoring potential – we’re just taking rough guesses. And you can believe that or not.