Directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan—collectively know as Daniels—made their feature debut in 2016 with the Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano-led Swiss Army Man. However, Jim Carrey approached the duo in 2014 about creating a found-footage horror film on the set of Dumb And Dumber To.
“Very early in our careers, Jim Carrey reached out,” Kwan says during a writer’s roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter. “He had just seen Paranormal Activity and was like, ‘Guys, it’s found footage and it’s horror—have you seen it?’ And we were like, ‘Uh-huh, we’ve heard of it. Where is this going?’ And he was like, ‘I haven’t seen anyone do that—but with comedy. And I have this great idea.’”
The idea stemmed from the original 1994 film Dumb And Dumber, which was shot at the famed Stanley Hotel (as seen in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining).
“Basically, the set of Dumb and Dumber was famously a haunted set,” Kwan says. “He’s like, ‘The whole time we were shooting, things were breaking, people were getting hurt, doors were swinging, and it felt haunted. We’re going to shoot Dumb and Dumber To, and I want you guys to do a found-footage horror comedy on the set. While we’re filming, you guys are going to make a feature-length, behind-the-scenes video that slowly becomes a horror film.’ We’re like, ‘OK, we’re in. This is amazing.’ We wrote a whole outline and were really excited.”
However, the project came to a halt thanks to the producers on the film.
Kwan continues, “Then we sat down with the producer, we pitched the idea, and they’re like, ‘We’re not actually going to make this. I’m sorry, Jim got really excited, but there’s no way the studio is going to let us do a movie while they’re shooting Dumb and Dumber To.’”
That’s all for today’s “Jim Carrey films that never came to be” news.