Before he was God, he was a telephone lineman. Ever since The Shawshank Redemption in 1994, Morgan Freeman has become the 'go to' guy for voice over narration, his calm, deliberate tones lending an air of authenticity to the proceedings. When he's not narrating, he's mentoring, fathering, or advising, usually playing some kind of wise authority figure, which helps explain why it was so easy to accept him as God in Bruce Almighty.

Freeman didn't start as an authority figure, though. He appeared in numerous stage productions in the 1960s before moving into television as a versatile performer on the children's show The Electric Company. Somewhere along 1971 he took a job as a telephone lineman in a commercial for a mouthwash company. What struck me as fascinating is that the cadence of his speech is very familiar: brief pauses, then melting words together. What's different is that the tone of his voice is higher. He was in his early 30s at the time; over the decades, his voice has deepened and mellowed into the voice that followed a thousand marching penguins. Watch the clip and see God just hanging around as a blue collar worker.

Get ready to proclaim the good news, all ye fans of Steve Carell, The Office and Bruce Almighty. Tomorrow night (Thursday, March 29) at 9PM EDT Moviefone will be debuting the brand-new full-length trailer for Evan Almighty, aka the sequel to Bruce, right here. Sensitive folk that we are, we understand that 9PM tomorrow night sounds like it's eons away to some of you Carell junkies. To this end, we're offering an exclusive glimpse at the poster for Evan Almighty right this minute. Behold it in all its godly glory below (double-click on the image for a larger version).

In this sequel to the 2003 box office hit, Carell reprises his role as Evan Baxter, but he's come a long way from competing with Jim Carrey for the job of news anchor at a Buffalo, New York, TV station. Newly elected to Congress, Evan is determined to serve his country -- that is, until God (Morgan Freeman) charges him with the task of becoming a modern-day Noah (complete with gray beard and Iggy Pop-length hair), building a new ark and perhaps saving all of mankind. Remember to check out Moviefone tomorrow night for the premiere of a trailer so funny you just might exclaim -- as Evan did in Bruce Almighty -- "I like-a do the cha-cha like a little sissy girl." Evan Almighty sails into theaters June 22.

Watch the teaser trailer | See photos

So it seems that Will Ferrell is not the only one who thinks audiences can't get enough of sports comedies -- although to be fair I can't help but giggle at the sight of Ferrell on a treadmill singing My Humps. The Hollywood reporter has announced that Tom Shadyac, director of Bruce Almighty, has signed to produce the cycling comedy Tour de Frank for Universal. The comedy pitch by Andrea King and Andy Marx is being produced through Shadyac's Shady Acres Entertainment in partnership with Universal. Shadyac is expected to direct, but so far he hasn't made any commitments.

Shadyac just finished directing Evan Almighty and also produced the upcoming Adam Sandler comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. So while he seems to be keeping busy with comedies, Shadyac is also working on a film based on the memoirs of John Francis, titled Planetwalker (also with Universal), and judging by Eric's description of that project, I doubt there will be any opportunities for lighthearted humor. There aren't many details on Tour de Frank's story so far beyond the initial set up of a comedy set in the world of competitive cycling; but I can already see a world of possibilities in spandex-related humor.

"All the characters in this book are fictitious, and anyone finding a resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, should proceed no further ..." Disclaimer from the novel 'The Number 23.' Sadly no such disclaimer was given to the beginning of this film, which could serve as a warning to people who might be wanting those two hours from their lives back, should they ignore it and watch the film. Okay, that might be a bit harsh, but not by too much. This film reunites director Joel Schumacher with star Jim Carrey, who both worked over-the-top together in 1995's Batman Forever. Oddly enough (although unrelated) that was the same year that gave us Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. It would still be a few more years, three to be exact, until we would start to see the serious side of Jim Carrey, in 1998's The Truman Show. Since then he's dabbled in more dramatic roles in films like Simon Birch, The Majestic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and arguably Man on the Moon, but he has never really managed to capture audiences when he plays a dramatic role the same way he does when he's in a comedy.

In fact, Bruce Almighty grossed more than those four films combined. So, with all that in mind, it might seem strange that Carrey would turn to a much darker role in a thriller like The Number 23. Although on paper the film actually sounds intriguing: a happily married man with a teenage son starts to become unraveled by a mysterious novel his wife gives him one day. It taps into a hidden obsession that some people have with "The 23 Enigma," and he soon becomes obsessed with it. He is also convinced that the book is actually written about him, and that somehow the author used his life as a template for the book. In some of the particularly darker scenes in the film, Walter (Carrey) imagines himself as the main character, Detective Fingerling, in the novel, and his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) as the dark and sexy Fabrizia, his love interest. His wife's friend and academic Isaac (Danny Huston) who tells Walter about the 23 enigma is also cast in his dark fantasies as psychologist Dr. Miles Phoenix.

I recently got the chance to sit down for a brief one-on-one with Jim Carrey during a press junket (translate: press torture simulator) for The Number 23. If you've never seen a junket before, they're pretty brutal. They invite dozens of members of the press to show up, give them interview slots with the talent, and then stick to their schedule tighter than KFC sticks to their secret spices recipe. Seriously, if they put the people in charge of scheduling these things in some sort of high-ranking position at the airlines, there would never be a late flight again. It's scary how efficiently they are run.

Now, keep in mind that this wasn't going to be the Ace Ventura Jim Carrey, or the Bruce Almighty one, but the darker and more brooding Jim Carrey -- closer to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Carrey than any other. I wanted to ask him why his dramatic roles don't perform as well as his comedic ones, but I was worried that he might respond to the question by leaping across the room and tearing my throat out. Of course, this nervousness resulted in me kicking his foot, and finding out that if he was Tommy Lee Jones, I might have been worse for wear.

At any rate, I was ushered into the mysterious hotel room that was decorated in dark motifs for the film, and sat down with what turned out to be a genuinely nervous Jim Carrey. (Because of course, I'm so famous and all, it must have been slightly intimidating for him.) I found him to be real and honest, and he didn't give "canned" Hollywood answers, which I actually half-expected. Maybe the foot-kicking loosened him up. By the way, the Jenny McCarthy questions were "off limits," so I didn't bother asking those. Check out the video, and Jim's long hair, after the jump.

When screenwriter Steve Oedekerk and comedian Jim Carrey get together, very profitable things happen. True that they only worked on two movies together (Ace Ventura 2 and Bruce Almighty), but they were pretty solid moneymakers. So I suppose it's pretty good news that Paramount has hired Oedekerk to give a facelift to the screenplay for Ripley's Believe It or Not, which was originally penned by the writing team of Alexander & Karaszewski.

Obviously this bodes fairly well for the project as a whole, because when Paramount back-burnered the thing a few months back, nobody really knew if the project would wither away or come storming back. With Variety reporting an intended late-2008 production date, and the pretty-much-guaranteed involvement of director Tim Burton and leading man Jim Carrey, it looks like Ripley will live once Sweeney Todd gets wrapped.

Gotta love that nutty Tim Burton stuff. (That's not sarcasm; aside from his misguided Apes remake, Burton's a pretty admirable filmmaker, and a consistently good one at that.) And anything that keeps Oedekerk distracted from his intended Kung Pow: Enter the Fist sequel, well, that makes me very happy indeed.

If they're going to make any money off of Evan Almighty (next summer's sequel to Bruce Almighty) Universal will need to pray for a miracle to occur ... and fast. Due to a slew of visual effects and the need to shoot hundreds of live animals, Evan Almighty's original budget of $140 million has turned into $160 million and could top out at $175 million. Throw in your marketing costs, and some folks think the film could wind up with a budget of $250 million, making it the most expensive comedy ever.

If that turns out to be the case, pic's budget could top Bruce Almighty's total domestic gross of $242 million before it even hits theaters. While the original went on to collect $484 million worldwide, something tells me this sequel starring Steve Carell in the lead role will not even come close to those numbers, especially if the film receives some early bad buzz (which, I should point out, has not happened yet). In the sequel, Carell (reprising his role as Evan Baxter) is contacted by God (who will once again be played by Morgan Freeman) and told to help build an ark in preparation for a great flood. Carell is a hot actor these days, but does he have what it takes to make Evan Almighty one of the most successful comedies in the history of film? Quite a gamble if you ask me, and I'm just dying to see if it pays off ...

In the spirit of films like Bruce Almighty and Oh God, You Devil, where God and Satan are presented in the form of a human man, New Line has preemptively snatched up David Hubbard's original script, God, the Devil and Lucy, for mid to high-six figures.

The high-concept comedic story revolves around God and Satan who, tired of battling one another for human souls, decide to end the fight once and for all by traveling to earth in the form of a human and competing for the love of one woman. However, the two will have to do so without any powers, yet come equipped with all those fantastic human emotions like love, hurt and rejection. Whoever gets the gal to say "I love you" first, wins. Sounds fun enough, though I suppose the entire thing comes down to who they cast as God and Satan. I imagine they'll chase after the big guns, which means the names Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson will most likely show up sooner rather than later.

USA Today has our first look at Steve Carell as Evan Almighty and, by God, the man either looks like something out of the Bible or a leftover from a Grateful Dead show. Taking over where Jim Carrey left off, this sequel to Bruce Almighty will switch to follow Carell's character, who goes from news anchor to congressman.

The first half of the film will center around Evan Baxter's rising success in the political world, as he picks up his family and shuffles them off to Washington, D.C. God (Morgan Freeman) finally makes an appearance after he's summoned through prayer, and instructs Evan to build an ark before a great flood arrives. Evan attempts to play off his meeting with God -- however, hair begins to grow and, soon, the whole thing goes biblical on his ass. 

The picture above is Evan's final transformation, though he does sport several different looks throughout the film. Here are the names these looks were given: Mountain Man, Marlboro Man, The Unibomber, Ten Commandments, The Metrosexual and Longest Brown. While I felt Bruce Almighty became a little too preachy for me about halfway through, I'm thinking Evan Almighty is going to be a better film for some reason. I swear, it all came to me in a dream. The hairy dude hits theaters in June 2007.

[via Coming Soon]

Wow, talk about taking a long view - the distribution folks at Universal were examining their release schedule the other day and spotted a large, inviting space in early summer, 2007. To take advantage of said space, they decided to yank Evan Almighty, the Steve Carell-starring sequel to Bruce Almighty, from its planned release at the end of this year and push it back six months.

Now, I don't know much about studio machinations, but something stinks about this. (Is the movie behind schedule? Say it's behind schedule - what's the big deal?) Though the studio is crowing about "an opportunity to get prime summer playtime for the sequel to a movie that did great in the summer," the fact is that they're moving their sequel into direct competition with Transformers: The Movie. Even if Transformers sucks, people are going to see it. Lots and lots of people. And, though it's not a comedy, it seems likely that it will still be fighting Evan Almighty for the much-coveted teenage boy audience. All of which might be worth the risk, if there was direct, hardcore competition in the movie's previous slot - let's take a look, shall we? Ah, I see Charlotte's Web and Night at the Museum. Yeah. Not so scary.