Steve Carell Starred In The Most Expensive Comedy Movie Ever Made And It Bombed At The Box Office

The Steve Carell movie Evan Almighty was at one time the most expensive comedy movie ever, in addition to being an enormous box office bomb. The 2007 movie was a sequel to 2003’s Bruce Almighty, which starred Jim Carrey in the title role. The follow-up, which featured an ensemble cast that included Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins, Jimmy Bennett, and Wanda Sykes, focused on the story of a previously minor Bruce Almighty supporting character named Evan Baxter who was played by Carell, who had since risen to fame playing Michael Scott on the sitcom The Office.

In addition to being a television star, Carell would go on to be a major movie star. One of his best-known roles is voicing the reformed supervillain Gru in the Despicable Me movies, but he has held many major roles outside of the animated franchise in both comedies and dramas. This includes starring in projects such as Crazy, Stupid, Love, IF, Date Night, The Big Short, Welcome to Marwen, and Foxcatcher, the latter of which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

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Evan Almighty Had A Colossal Budget Of Around $175 Million

The Movie’s Break-Even Point Was Impossibly High

The sequel to the Jim Carrey and Steve Carell collaboration likely seemed like a viable financial prospect because Carell had just scored major hits with The Office and 2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin. This may have led to the movie getting its $175 million production budget, making it the most expensive comedy ever at the time. In general, because theaters keep half of ticket sales and publicity costs are not factored into budgets, a movie needs to earn roughly two-and-a-half times its budget to turn a profit. This likely placed the break-even point for Evan Almighty somewhere north of $437.5 million.

However, the movie only earned $174.4 million at the box office, meaning that it did not even make its budget back in the raw numbers. This gross might have made the movie a success if it had cost significantly less, as movies that grossed lower that same year did become hits including Superbad (which grossed $170.8 million against a roughly $20 million budget), Saw IV (which grossed $139.4 million against a $10 million budget), and Atonement (which grossed $131 million against a $30 million budget).

Evan Almighty would eventually be usurped as the most expensive comedy movie of all time by the 2012 sequel Men in Black 3, which had a reported budget between $215 and $225 million. However, while the movie – which was led by Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Josh Brolin – has strong comedy elements, it lands much more squarely in the science fiction and action genres. It was also a much larger box office success, grossing $654.2 million worldwide, becoming the tenth highest-grossing movie of the year, and eventually spawning the 2019 spinoff Men in Black: International.

Why Steve Carell’s Evan Almighty Was So Poorly Received

The Movie Was Compared Negatively To Bruce Almighty

Evan Almighty proved to be a hit with neither critics nor audiences and currently holds Rotten Tomatoes scores of 24% and 52% with both groups respectively. Many reviews agree that the movie is a waste of Carell and the rest of its ensemble cast, hiding unfunny jokes behind an excess of over-the-top special effects. While some praise its heartfelt storyline, most find it to be chaotic and messy, paling in comparison to Bruce Almighty, a movie that in and of itself only has a 48% score from critics on the review aggregator platform.

Evan Almighty Is One Of Many Awful Jim Carrey-Less Sequels

The Star Did Not Appear In Many Follow-Ups To His Early Movies

For quite some time before the advent of Dumb and Dumber To and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the only sequels that were made to Jim Carrey movies did not feature the star, with the exception of 1995’s Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, which was a smash hit at the box office, earning $212.4 million against its $30 million budget. In general, these sequels received dismal reviews from critics. Below, see a breakdown of sequels or follow-ups to Jim Carrey movies that don’t feature the star and how they fared on Rotten Tomatoes:

While the made-for-television Ace Ventura: Pet Detective Jr. has not yet received an official Rotten Tomatoes score because it only has four reviews, three of them are negative, effectively giving it a 25% score. This makes it the best reviewed of the foursome behind Evan Almighty, though none of them have charmed more than a quarter of critics. This may show that the Steve Carell comedy was doomed from the start, in spite of the fact that the star had a hit television comedy under his belt.