The Bruce Almighty Sequel Would Have Had Jim Carrey Turn To The Dark Side
In the 2003 movie "Bruce Almighty," Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, an average, flawed news reporter who feels like God (played by Morgan Freeman) is being unfair and neglecting his job by not making Bruce's life perfect. For example, Bruce blames God because his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Anniston) broke up with him and because he got fired from his job. God hears Bruce's complaint prayer and, surprisingly, decides to answer it in person. Since Bruce thinks he could do so much better, God offers Bruce the chance to take over his job for a week — God has been wanting a vacation from his infinite duties anyway.
Once Bruce takes over as God, he learns that answering everyone's prayers is not so easy. There are so many that he can't hear them all and doesn't have the time or energy to address those he can hear. Also, he is not able to alter anyone's free will, which places limitations on which prayer wishes he can grant. Eventually, he makes a program to answer every prayer "yes," but this causes an apocalyptic level of disaster and chaos. At the end of the movie, Bruce gives God his powers back and learns what is really important in life.
Although the devil is not really mentioned much in the original "Bruce Almighty" film, he was supposed to play a role in the unmade sequel, where Bruce turns to the dark side. There already was a sequel to "Bruce Almighty," called "Evan Almighty" (2007, starring Steve Carrell), but this film would have been a separate third movie once again starring Jim Carrey.
In the unmade Bruce Almighty sequel called Brucifer, Jim Carrey would have had devil powers
In an interview with SyFy Wire, Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, who co-wrote the script of "Bruce Almighty" along with Steve Oedekerk, discussed the unmade sequel of "Bruce Almighty," where Bruce turns to the dark side. Although the movie, called "Brucifer," was never made, it sounds incredible.
Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe actually pitched "Brucifer," the sequel where Bruce gains the powers of Satan rather than God, to "Bruce Almighty" producer Michael Bostick the night "Bruce Almighty" premiered in 2003. "It was going to be the Trials of Job, essentially," O'Keefe told SyFy Wire. "The world had not gone his way since he was God. Everything was great for a while; he was married and it all fell apart. He was once again questioning everything and then got a different way to solve things." He also specified that the reason Bruce's life is going poorly and he is doubting things is because his wife, Grace (Jennifer Anniston) died.
Koren said, "You tend to lose your faith when the world seems unfair, and that's what got him," Koren says. "It came from a serious place, but we were gonna write it in a very friendly way. We certainly didn't want to depress people. So I think that scared [the studio] a little bit, but to Jim's credit, he totally understood that we were going to make a big comedy and thought everybody would connect with it." Although Satan is certainly a dark character, there are already several successful comedies about Satan such as "Little Nicky" (2000) and "Bedazzled" (2000).
Morgan Freeman or Jim Carrey would have played Satan in Brucifer
In the interview with SyFy Wire, "Bruce Almighty" script co-writer Mark O'Keefe described "Brucifer" as "the most cost-effective sequel imaginable" since they planned to have either Morgan Freeman or Jim Carrey himself play Satan. Rather than having Jim Carrey return to play Bruce, co-writers Mark O'Keefe and Steve Koren imagined either Jim Breuer, Chris Farley, or Will Ferrell to play Bruce.
As for what Bruce would do with his temporary Satanic powers in "Brucifer," O'Keefe and Koren had the idea that he would probably find a way to resurrect Grace (Jennifer Anniston), his wife whose death led him to doubt God again, like in the first movie. When Jim Carrey heard about this idea, he thought it was funny, but he took it a step further by suggesting Grace come back at first as a rotting corpse. Koren added, "He said, 'No, she has to look like a zombie first and then we'll make her beautiful again.' We thought that was brilliant."
Although the co-writers and actors seemed to have put together a project with a lot of potential, there is a reason why "Brucifer" never got made.
Brucifer was never made because Evan Almighty bombed
Although "Bruce Almighty" co-writers Mark O'Keefe and Steve Koren pitched the idea of "Brucifer" to producer Michael Bostick in 2003, according to SyFy Wire, they did not bring the idea to Universal Pictures until 2010. By that point, a sequel to "Bruce Almighty" had already been released: "Evan Almighty" (2007). Rather than starring Jim Carrey as Bruce, "Evan Almighty" stars Steve Carrel as Evan, a man who God (Morgan Freeman) tasks with the project of building an ark and filling it with two of each animal to prepare for a flood. Because "Evan Almighty" was such a financial flop, the studio was reluctant to take on another "Bruce Almighty" project (despite the success of the original film).
Additionally, another reason why "Brucifer" would be a riskier film for the studio to make (at least from a financial standpoint) is that Satan is a much darker and more specific character than the version of God that was portrayed in "Bruce Almighty." Koren told SyFy Wire, "We went out of our way to not ever address a specific god of a specific religion. We tried to keep it general so everybody could relate to it." Keeping the concept of God so generalized also prevented the movie from being offensive to any particular group. However, a film featuring Satan would be offensive to some groups because he is a more specific character who is clearly from a particular religion.
Although the sequel "Brucifer" never got made, there are still several places where you can watch "Bruce Almighty," including Prime Video, Peacock, and more.