Jim Carrey Thinks THE THREE STOOGES Film is “Dead”

Way back in 2008, MGM set a release date of November 20, 2009 for the Farrelly brothers’ contemporary take on The Three Stooges. The movie, reportedly in the works for thirteen years, was set to star Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, and Jim Carrey as Moe, Larry, and Curly, respectively

Now, nearly a year after the would-be release date has passed and pre-production on the movie has yet to begin, Jim Carrey has announced that he feels physically unable to gain the weight needed for him to play Curly, saying “I think it’s dead. It’s dead at least with me.” Hit the jump for Carrey’s words and why he feels “It’ll be awful.”

To understand the problems that The Three Stooges has been facing since rounding out what must be the most arbitrary selection of a cast in cinema history, lets take a look back at some news on the project over the past few years.

In June 2009, Sean Penn was reported to have backed out of the project to spend more time with his family. A few weeks later, in a move that made slightly more sense casting-wise, Paul Giamatti was all set to replace Penn as Larry. Then, in January, Sean Penn signed back on, apparently having spent enough time with his family.

Let that all sink in for a minute because today, in an interview with MTV, Jim Carrey has announced that he has dropped out of the project, citing his inability to gain enough weight to play Curly:

“For me, I don’t really want to do anything halfway, and I don’t feel like a fat suit does it. I started experimenting with it a little bit, and I gained 35, 40 pounds. I wanted to gain another 30, 40. When you’re [Robert] De Niro in your 20s or early 30s, you can kind of come back from that. It’s a tough thing to come back from when you’re upwards of 30. Your body can’t carry it or you can have a cardiac arrest… Put that with Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro slapping me in the head all day long, and someone will lose an eye. It won’t be good. It’ll be awful.”

Considering all that this film has gone through so far, it might be safe to assume that Carrey will be recast and the movie will continue to not be in development.

To continue with this film’s knack for erratic and nonsensical casting, I’m going to suggest Michael Cera for the role of Moe, with Nicolas Cage as Larry, and Jeff Bridges as Curly. Lets also sign on Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman to write, and Michael Bay to direct. Now we got ourselves a movie.