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2016 May See a McConaughey-Style Career Resurgence for a Former A-Lister

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | April 20, 2016 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | April 20, 2016 |


Look really close. Can you identify this former A-list star.

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Maybe this will help, from the 1997 MTV Movie Awards.

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Yes, the above photo is of Jim Carrey on the set of Bad Batch, due out later this year. Carrey, of course, hasn’t scored $100 million at the box office in a live action film since 2005’s Fun with Dick and Jane, and Bad Batch is certainly not going to end the streak.

But it may resurrect his career, because he’s not funning around for a comedy. Bad Batch is a not a comedy, or even a typical kind of movie. It’s a dystopian love story in a Texas wasteland set in a community of cannibals, and before you say, “Ugh, straight-to-streaming,” the rest of the cast suggests more possibility: Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, Suki Waterhouse, and Diego Luna.

The best part? It comes from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour, who wrote and directed one of 2014’s most critically acclaimed films, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Amirpour describes the film as Road Warrior meets Pretty in Pink with a dope soundtrack.”

There may not be a lot of box-office potential in a dystopian cannibal love story, but it’s certainly got the potential to be the kind of cult and/or critical hit, like Mud and Killer Joe that helped elevate McConaughey’s career. Annapurna Pictures (American Hustle, Zero Dark Thirty, Her) is producing it, and they have a good track record.

However, it takes more than one film to resurrect a career as dead as Jim Carrey’s post Dumb and Dumber To, and Carrey’s Dallas Buyer’s Club might be a film called True Crimes. It comes from Greek director Alexandros Avranas (behind the critically acclaimed Miss Violence) and screenwriter Jeremy Brock, who won a BAFTA for the Last King of Scotland screenplay (which also garnered Forrest Whitaker an Oscar). The film also stars Charlotte Gainsbourg. Based on a 2008 New Yorker article, it’s about a murder investigation of a slain business man who turns to clues found in an author’s book about an eerily similar crime.

It’s also not a typical look from Jim Carrey.

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He’s crazy in the head, and a little whacked out, but I am always rooting for the guy. And if these two movies don’t resurrect his career, I hear that they’re looking for a new Wolverine.