I’ve been talking about the upcoming sequel to Bruce Almighty, Even Almighty, for a while now. For those of you who didn’t know about it, Evan was the character in Bruce Almighty who was played by Steve Carell, who now becomes the title character:
The last time we saw Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), he was being tormented by rival Bruce Nolan onscreen, live from their Buffalo TV station. But as time passed and Evan has made up with Bruce, he’s gone onto bigger and better things. Newly elected to Washington D.C. as a congressman, Evan has left Buffalo, New York in pursuit of a greater calling. But that calling isn’t serving in the illustrious ranks of America’s politics, but being summoned by the Almighty himself (Morgan Freeman), who has handed Evan the task of building a new ark, much as Noah did before. With time passing by and his family belittled by Evan’s newfound realization, Evan will have to do the work that God has given him in what promises to be an unusual adventure for a man who just wanted to serve his country, might actually be serving humanity.
Sound great, and I can’t wait to see it. But hold the phone… Seymour sent me this links that suggest something really disturbing…
Apparently, it looks like Evan Almighty could come in costing a whopping $250 million to make. Are they serious?!?!?! The good folks over at ShowBixData (quoting the LA Times) give us this:
Costs have skyrocketed for Universal’s upcoming Evan Almighty, starring Steve Carell, with final expenditures likely to exceed at least $175 million — $250 million, including marketing — the Los Angeles Times reported today (Monday). Such a budget would make it the most expensive comedy in history, the newspaper observed. According to the Times, studio executives have acknowledged that the Bruce Almighty sequel has exceeded original budget estimates but are confident it will eventually be profitable.
WOW! This has totally caught me off guard. I thought that this film would MAYBE cost about $75 million at most. The scale of this project must be a lot bigger than I thought… either that or they just totally lost control of the production costs and wasted a hell of a lot of money.
I don’t know… the idea of a simple comedy costing north of $175 million just seems… I don’t know… wrong. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the hell they spent all the money on.
