![Jim Carrey in The Mask [GIF]](https://hips.hearstapps.com/digitalspyuk.cdnds.net/16/44/1478131403-mask.gif?resize=1200:* "Jim Carrey in The Mask [GIF]")
Jim Carrey's The Mask could have been a whole lot different.
Talking to Xfinity, director Chuck Russell has revealed that the studio that made it, New Line, wanted to follow in the success of A Nightmare On Elm Street.
"It's a great example of really fighting for your vision in a film. We changed it from a horror film into a comedy. It was originally conceived as being a horror film. That was a real battle," he recalled.
"New Line wanted a new kind of Freddy [Krueger] movie. By coincidence, I had seen the same original Mask comic they ended up buying, and I thought, 'That's really cool, but it's too derivative of Freddy Krueger'. It really was."
Russell outlined that the original version of the movie would have seen Stanley Ipkiss (Carrey) put on the mask and kill people, delivering the odd one-liner, something which Freddy increasingly did in the Nightmare On Elm Street sequels.
"They've redone the comics to be more like my movie, but the original comics were really cool, dark and scary. But I knew, as a film, it would be very reminiscent of Freddy Krueger," he added.
Russell also noted that when he cast Carrey, he hadn't yet done Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but he knew that he would be the actor to "help me successfully make a comedy" out of the original comics.
And if it wasn't Carrey, apparently Matthew Broderick and Nicolas Cage were on the shortlist for the lead role.
We're not sure they could have quite pulled off Cuban Pete, mind.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
