Actor Jim Carrey’s next trip to Whoville could give him more freedom to move — and director Ron Howard says a new story idea finally gave him a reason to consider going back.
“None of us need to make a sequel,” Howard admitted at the Hamptons festival earlier this month.
That is a pretty useful starting point for revisiting HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, the 2000 holiday movie starring Carrey as Dr. Seuss’ Christmas-hating outsider. Howard’s update offers something more interesting than a promise to dust off a familiar character: a creative team that wants a good reason to return.
The project remains in early development at Imagine Entertainment. Howard said Carrey believes in the idea, but both want to know they can make something great before moving ahead.
For Carrey, the practical question matters, too. Howard recalled how difficult the original makeup made the job and how much more freely the actor performed in rehearsals without it.
“In rehearsals, when he was unencumbered by the makeup, it was another level of the Grinch,” the director explained, pointing to newer tech as a way out of the bothersome makeup process.
Related: DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS
He pointed to Carrey’s motion-capture experience with director Robert Zemeckis on the 2009 animated A CHRISTMAS CAROL. The possibility, as Howard described it, is to recreate the Grinch’s appearance while giving the performer more room to work — not simply to put him through the same uncomfortable routine again.
Carrey raised that possibility himself in ComicBook’s December 2024 interview, conducted ahead of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3.
“And now, with motion capture and things like that, I could be free to do other things. Anything is possible in this world,” Carrey said after describing the original makeup process as painful and difficult to breathe through.
Howard’s new interview does not confirm a final costume change or a specific production technique. Technology might ease one problem, but he said he still needed a story — and that was the missing piece until an idea came to him about a year ago.
He is keeping that idea to himself for now. Howard said he took it first to producer Brian Grazer, who got excited, and that writers Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel want to reunite for the project after contributing to the original movie.
For families, the appeal goes beyond seeing Carrey turn green again. As Movieguide®’s earlier coverage noted, the original challenges the idea that Christmas means presents and leaves room for repentance and forgiveness, even while stopping short of naming Jesus Christ.
A return to Whoville has something worth building on, then. Howard and Carrey’s challenge is to find a new story that earns the trip, rather than asking a familiar face — or better technology — to do all the work.
Read Next: Jim Carrey’s Grinch Is Coming Back—And the Whole Original Team Is in Talks to Return
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