Jim Carrey almost starred in a live-action anime movie based on one of Hayao Miyazaki’s most prolific films. The legendary comedic actor was initially cast as the live-action American version of Lupin III in a film written by the co-writer of Hellboy (2004).

Peter Briggs, an English screenwriter who worked with Guillermo del Toro on the live-action version of Hellboy, nearly brought another iconic character to life in the early aughts. In a social media post shared on Bluesky (‪@/thepeterbriggs.bsky.social‬), Briggs revealed he wrote a script for a live-action movie adaptation of Lupin III, which would have starred Carrey in the titular role. The scrapped film would have drawn inspiration from the most influential stories in Lupin III’s history, such as The Castle of Cagliostro, which is not only considered one of the best animated Lupin III movies, but also one of Miyazaki’s finest works.

Jim Carrey Nearly Starred in a Live-Action Lupin III Movie Written by Hellboy’s Co-Writer

“I was doing a movie with Tsui Hark (and Oliver Stone’s producer, A. Kitman Ho), back in 1997,” Briggs wrote on Bluesky. “A live-action adaptation of Lupin III, that we would have done with Jim Carrey. Alex Ho (lovely, lovely man) ended up losing the rights, so it never happened. Craziest screenplay I ever wrote!” According to Briggs, Carrey as Lupin the 3rd was the only live-action casting considered at the time, as production on the film was still in its early stages of development. “I like to ‘cast in my head’ when I’m writing roles, but I was under a lot of pressure to get the first draft written, so I was visualizing the animated characters while writing it. Carrey was, I think, the only actor considered.”

Briggs continued: “There are bits of everything from Lupin in there. Bits of [The Secret of] Mamo, ‘Wings Of Death – Albatross,’ Cagliostro. But a big, BIG storyline. No Lupin animated has even come close to the scale of craziness we had in our screenplay. I was surprised when I saw Lupin III: The First. Some of our stuff was in it. […] It had a flashback heist in Paris with Lupin’s Pop, a theft from the White House, a scene set in Antarctica with Fujiko, the theft of the Crown Jewels in London by robots, a fight in an underground lair in Paris, another heist in Venice, robots vs Lupin car chase in Morocco, Ninjas vs Goemon in a monastery, an Illuminati Flying Saucer abducting the Orient Express, an INSANE seaplane climax on Mount Everest… and that barely scratches the surface. It was BIG. I wrote it at the same time I was doing Hellboy, and it nearly gave me a nervous breakdown!”

Currently, there are only three projects where Lupin III has been adapted into live-action. The first was the 1974 film, Lupin III: Strange Psychokinetic Strategy, which starred Yūki Meguro in the titular role. However, the more familiar live-action adaptation was the 2014 self-titled movie directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (Godzilla: Final Wars), starring Shun Oguri as Lupin the 3rd. The final live-action version was a 2015 musical adaptation performed by the all-female Takarazuka Revue troupe.

Based on Briggs’s posts, some of the concepts featured in his live-action Lupin III draft were incorporated into the CG-animated movie Lupin III: The First, which premiered in theaters in Japan on Dec. 6, 2019. Given the recent trends of live-action anime adaptations, another take on Lupin the 3rd could be on the horizon. However, it’s unlikely that Carrey — now in his early 60s — would play the young, animated thief. Carrey is now best known as Dr. Eggman in the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movies for Paramount.