ComingSoon.net has learned that Paramount Pictures may be searching for a new director for the Jim Carrey-starring action-adventure Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. Tim Burton had been attached to helm the feature, written by Steve Oedekerk (Evan Almighty). The studio was planning a winter 2008 start for a 2009 release date, but it’s not known whether this will change things.
The film is based on Robert Ripley, who was an aspiring professional baseball player until he was injured in 1913, the same year his first cartoon appeared in a newspaper. Ripley visited 201 countries throughout his lifetime, all the while collecting information about strange oddities to appear in his columns and cartoons.
In Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, the eccentric, wealthy, world-renown collector goes in search of a magical, lost tribe of people. He must battle nefarious forces and come to terms with the man behind the mysteries.
Oedekerk and Carrey began collaborating on “In Living Color,” and Oedekerk wrote and directed Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and scripted Bruce Almighty. Burton is currently directing Johnny Depp in the thriller musical Sweeney Todd.
