New news has emerged that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are developing a sequel to their 2000 hit. How the Grinch Stole Christmasthe duo sat down for a wide-ranging conversation at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium, where they provided a little tease for the new film.
talking to Hollywood Reporter The sequel is “something we’ve thought about for a long time, and you know what, it’s an idea that has all five or six brains excited. So it’s worth a shot,” editor-in-chief Meyer Roshan said Thursday.
Carrey is looking forward to his comeback despite famously struggling during production, with Grazer and Howard – who have been partners at production company Imagine Entertainment for 40 years – recounting how the star told them two weeks into filming that he could no longer handle the intense make-up and communications needed to become the Grinch and would return his $20 million salary with benefits.
Grazer explained that he had asked Curry to take a weekend to think about the matter before officially resigning, and in the meantime, “I met with someone who teaches State Department employees how to survive torture.” The expert traveled that weekend to meet with Curry, which seemed to do the job. “I had tried things before that, like inviting comedians to talk to Jim and trying to entertain him,” Grazer noted, but after the meeting, “on Monday he said, ‘No, I’ll stick with that.’” They developed a method for Jim to relieve pain.
Howard added, “Mostly he just worked his way through it, and he wouldn’t have skimped on the costume, or he wouldn’t have worn those contact lenses; this was before CGI could easily replace and color his eyes and things like that. He went through that, he learned a lot from this expert, he talked a lot about him and relied on those techniques, and he really trained through him. And by the way, I’ve never been in awe of any actor creating a character and a performance in any movie I’ve done. Done.”
Elsewhere in the chat, the pair reacted to the recent success of mania, Back rooms And the young YouTube filmmakers behind them.
“I think at the moment we kind of have Easy Rider “Moment,” Howard said, noting that he started working with young YouTube creators years before they hit the fashion scene. “I think there’s a generational shift happening now — some great examples of talented filmmakers born on YouTube and the people they choose to cast and the types of scenes they choose to write, and the cultural tone they achieve, which is incredibly effective, organic, and exciting for them.” He continued, “It happened for me and Brian and for a whole generation of baby boomers — there was a moment when the industry turned to people our age and said, ‘We need you, you know something we don’t quite know.'”
Grazer was a bit more skeptical, insisting that Hollywood’s pursuit of YouTubers simply “won’t work” and that “the format isn’t that different from other things that have happened generations before, it’s just a newer version.” Howard added: “The people who are making the most progress now are the people who have put in hours and hours and hours, talking about 10,000 hours. They’ve been shooting – they’ve got bits and pieces but the big question is, are they going to pick the right stories?”
The conversation also touched on what stars can still make or break in a movie (with Grazer shouting out Leonardo DiCaprio and Zendaya as two standouts), the challenges posed by streamers’ risk-averse business model, and the US government’s slow response to the economic woes the industry is facing. Roshan asked whether Trump had more power over the industry than Ted Sarandos, to which Grazer replied “right now,” and criticized the administration for not doing more to help Hollywood out of its current problems.
Both men said they view artificial intelligence as an inevitability that has the potential to help Hollywood as well as hurt it. “I use AI to build stories, and that actually speeds things up a lot. So if I have an idea for a movie — I started out as a writer, as Ron did — you can build your idea with Claude, you can build the whole thing into an amazing outline.” “You still need a screenwriter – I always think you need a screenwriter 100 percent, but getting a screenwriter to build on an idea you pitch to them can take a year, and building it to a point where you can actually pitch it to a screenwriter can take a week.”
“There’s a lot of promise, and at this point, I don’t see a lot of efficiencies that you can really apply to a project today… It’s also our job to look at and be accountable for the ethical use of these tools and best practices,” Howard noted.
The couple – who claim they have never shouted at each other during their four decades of partnership – revealed they have no plans to retire, with Grazer confirming, “If the work stops, I will stop, but for me, we’ve made five or six films this year, but I feel like it’s a hobby. I love it, I love solving puzzles, that’s what it is.”
For his part, Howard added: “The one thing I’ve always told myself is that a lot of people want my job, and if it gets to the point where I’m apathetic about it, I’ll call it, and I’m lazy, and I don’t want to confront it, and then I’ll let them have the job. But now I don’t mind getting up at five in the morning and dealing with actors. These are adventures for me. They’re life experiences, and I enjoy collaboration above all else.”
