Currently keeping busy with a fine performance on HBO’s “The Newsroom,” even when the show around him perhaps isn’t so good, actor Jeff Daniels’ commitments to the Aaron Sorkin show obviously means that his film opportunities will be somewhat slimmer in the near future. The star will appear next in Rian Johnson’s “Looper,” but after that talk will instead turn to one of the numerous projects waiting for Daniels to take a break from the show. One that keeps cropping up is the long-discussed sequel to “Dumb and Dumber,” and only a few months after Jim Carrey suggested that the film was dead, Daniels recently expressed the opposite.
During a TCA press interview for “The Newsroom,” Daniels revealed that not only is the film still in active development, as Peter Farrelly revealed back in April, but production is even set to begin next year. “Jim wants to do it. I want to do it. The Farrelly [Bros.] want to do it. They want to rewrite the script a little bit and they aren’t trying to jam it in before I have to go back and do ‘Newsroom’ in November,” Daniels said, “So they’re going, ‘Why don’t we just do it right? Let’s get everybody organized to go next May or June.’ If everything works out on the business side, that’s what we’ll do but I think there’s more hope than ever.”
As for Carrey’s previous comments, Daniels chalked the sentiment up to pure irritation on the actor’s end. “I understood why, because this has been a year and a half of a whole bunch of ‘are we, aren’t we, what’s going on, yeah the script’s funny, no it’s not, now we have to have notes.’ So I think Jim just got frustrated and I completely got it. I was frustrated too. We thought it was in pretty good shape.”
The confidence Daniels conveyed in the Farrellys' script, as tinkered with as it may be, bodes well at least for a “Dumb and Dumber” sequel not being a complete cash grab, especially if Carrey and Daniels can tap into the same chemistry that made their 1994 film such a treat. Clearly a fair bit needs to fall into place before this happens, but fingers crossed, we may be getting "Dumb And Dumber To" (as Carrey suggested calling it) sometime in 2014. [Crave Online]
