1964's
The Incredible Mr. Limpet featured Don Knotts ("Three's Company"), and co-starred: Carole Cook, Jack Weston, Andrew Duggan, and Larry Keating. The story took place in 1941 just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It focused on a timid bookkeeper Henry Limpet (Don Knotts) who had a deep love for fish. One day Henry decides to enlist in the Navy like his buddy George (Jack Weston), but is rejected for being "too small and too weak to be a soldier." This crushes his spirits and he heads off to Coney Island. There, he falls into the water and with no reason given turns into a fish. From that point on the film features Henry as an animated fish. He basks in this new world, even meeting a female fish that catches his eye. Kinky! He also realizes that he has a unique ability to make a very loud noise and offers to use that talent to help the Navy find and sink U-boats.
I love the original. Don Knotts is just all sorts of wonderful. So, I was a little concerned a decade ago when I first heard that Jim Carrey was circling a remake. As time passed, nothing ever happened with that project. But now, you can see concept art of Jim Carrey as a fish. The images below were created by
Bob Camp, who was one of the conceptual artists working on the project. And just last week, Patton Oswalt ("King of Queens") was on
The Best Show on WFMU podcast and discussed the
The Incredible Mr. Limpet remake, based on information he received from
The Incredibles director, Brad Bird. Who was at one point sought after to direct the film.
They CG-animated a cartoony-looking fish that kinda looked like Jim Carrey. At that point, that's when you paid $25 million for Jim Carrey, period. That's what he costs. The studio realized, "So, he's live action for 10 minutes and then he's a cartoon and we just paid [$25 million]?" They did this rig – remember in Monty Python's Meaning of Life where they have the fish bodies? So, they basically did that. It's a fish with just Jim Carrey's human face. They were showing Brad Bird 'cause they were like, "If we're paying for Jim Carrey, we're having his face the whole time no matter what." All Brad Bird said when he described it to me… I go, "What'd it look like?" He said, "If you saw this in the water, you would get out of the water and run screaming and tell everyone the world was ending." It was the most horrifying thing he'd ever seen. They spent $10 million on the animation tests, and they never made the movie. - transcription by splitsider.com
Skip to the 1:20:01 mark to listen.
ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.