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Jim Carrey's recent preemptive dumping of A Little Game Without Consequence had us crippled with worry that we might never again see the unemployed megastar's name on the marquee of our local theater, but today's Variety allays those admittedly hysterical fears that a couple of big-budget plug-pullings might drive the actor into an early retirement: Carrey will work again! Probably, in late 2008! As Paramount promised at the time it decided to put Ripley's Believe It Or Not on a shelf until it could figure out how much money they wanted to spend on an already expensive movie that could spiral out of financial control each time director Tim Burton decided to indulge one of the actor's requests to "try that take again, but this time, can I do it while riding on the shoulders of a twenty-foot-tall, solid gold robot? I really think that's what my performance needs here," it's revived the project, adding a writer amenable to Carrey's helpful creative input:

[Writer Steve] Oedekerk, who'll be paid a seven-figure fee, has long been a Carrey go-to-guy. They began collaborating on "In Living Color," and Oedekerk wrote and directed "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls" and scripted "Bruce Almighty." Oedekerk most recently scripted the Tom Shadyac-directed "Evan Almighty," starring Steve Carell.

Carrey hatched many of the creative ideas that will broaden the emphasis from his Robert Ripley character to some of the wonders he uncovered for his "Believe It or Not!" column.

The addition of this noted Carrey Whisperer should help ease the project through the arduous rewrite process ahead, translating the actor's budget-inflating visions for the film into a form more palatable to the studio. For example, when Carrey faxes in his own unsolicited script pages calling for a full-scale replica of Atlantis to be erected for a ten-second sequence about Ripley's imagined trip to discover the wonders of the lost continent, his longtime collaborator can patiently explain to worried executives that the actor is "just thinking out loud, it's part of his process" and assure them, "Don't worry, I'll make him think it was his idea to cut that scene down to two lines of dialogue that require no submerged civilization construction."