This is not the first time they have attempted to make the story of Robert Ripley’s journalism career chronicling the strange and unbelievable with the tag line “Believe it… or not”. However after Tim Burton stepped away from the project nearly four years ago, Paramount is still itching to make it happen.
Oscar-winning scribe Eric Roth has come aboard to do a complete rewrite overhaul. Tim Burton, who had been set to direct that earlier incarnation, is gone. But Jim Carrey is still attached to star as Ripley.
The film is about Ripley’s search around the world for the most unusual people and places that he immortalized in his newspaper column. The locales were exotic and the sights were unbelievable, but the film is about Ripley’s journey to appreciate that the unusual people were more than just conquests to be cataloged.
I think Carrey would do well with this, and as much as I like Tim Burton, I am glad he is not involved. The story is about a real man who showed off real amazing wonders, and I would have worried that Burton would turn it into a fantastical supernatural story with a zany Carrey.
Now they still could do that, but personally I would like to see a more serious look at the man, not the wonders he wrote about. And Carrey could do that too.
Sad that we won’t have Jack Pallance to narrate.
