Carrey would have played Satan in the sequel to “Bruce Almighty”

If the screenwriters of the Jim Carrey comedy from 2003 had their way, the film would have received a much darker second.

The original film was about a disgruntled reporter (Carrey) who for a week receives the powers of God (Morgan Freeman) and the mission to make the world a better place. It was not unexpectedly a huge success, grossing $484 million, and screenwriters Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe (who co-wrote the film with Steve Oedekerk) quickly began speculating about a sequel.

“Brucifer” would be about Bruce’s girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston) dying and Bruce adopting Satan’s powers to resurrect her. In an interview with Syfy, Koren talks about the idea:

"I remember when we pitched the idea and Jim tanned his ass. We thought she would come back as Jennifer Aniston. But he said “No, she has to look like a zombie first and then we’ll make her beautiful again”. We thought it was brilliant.

But it seemed that the film company was unsure about the dark theme and in the end the film was never made.

"It came from a serious site, but we thought of writing it in a very friendly way. We really didn’t want to depress people. So I think that scared the film company a little bit but Jim totally understood that we wanted to make a big comedy and that people would relate to it.

Instead, we got the 2007 spinoff “Evan Almighty” with Steve Carell, which was a well-deserved flop. In a better world, we would have seen Carrey as Satan and Aniston as a zombie…