Jim Carrey & Steve Carell Team For Magician Comedy BURT WONDERSTONE

When Steve Carell upstaged the laughter stakes from Jim Carrey with his eccentric news-reading cameo performance in 2003's Bruce Almighty, it was something of a passing of the torch. Carrey, the biggest comedic leading man of his era, saw his star begin to fade with a number of bad film choices (The Number 23 anyone?) until he became somewhat of an after thought (though his films still made money). All the while Carell was making the right choice after the right choice and his time on NBC's The Office was making him the king of comedy. (Ok so Carell did make one bad choice in this period... sequelizing Bruce Almighty with the Noah's Ark re-telling Evan Almighty but that movie was a failure because of it's bloated budget and did nothing to harm Carell's image). A few years after Bruce Almighty, Carell had well and truly taken Carrey's crown. Recently Carrey has been looking to take on roles that would re-capture that huge and loyal audience he had in the 90's. There was the slapstick comedy adaptation of The Three Stooges that he was attached to for a while under the helm of his Dumb & Dumber directors The Farrelly Brothers (though he exited the project before filming) and this year's Mr. Popper's Penguins was a 90's Carrey vehicle but released in 2011. That movie was a big hit worldwide ($184 million on $55 million budget) and Deadline say Carrey is wisely aligning himself with Carell in the upcoming comedy Burt Wonderstone to keep the momentum going. Written by Horrible Bosses scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the light-hearted comedy is based around a fading Las Vegas magician who accidentally kills his partner and is consistently outdone by a younger, hipper illusionist, forcing him to rediscover his enthusiasm for magic. Carell has long been attached as Wonderstone, the fading Las Vegas magician... but with both actors 49 years old, it's hard to imagine Carrey as the younger illusionist so they are probably now the same age. Interestingly the a recent re-write has come from Juno and Up in the Air's director Jason Reitman so expect the movie to have some significant gravitas as that's the kind of projects that appeal to Carell (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Dan in Real Life, Crazy Stupid Love) and this is one he has stuck with despite a few years of stalling. Originally he was instrumental in attaching his frequent The Office director Charles McDougall to it, but more recently it's 30 Rock helmer Don Scardino who will direct. With Carrey's clean slate, expect Burt Wonderstone to film early next year when Carell wraps up his role in Great Hope Springs with Meryl Streep. Of Carrell & Carrey have been threatening a co-starring team-up for years. There's Bruce Almighty and they shared voicing co-starring credits on Horton Hears A Who a few years back, and Carrey has even made a cameo in The Office (though for a brief few seconds in an episode long after Carell had left!) but now they will share top billing in a live-action comedy.