Classic Scene: The Truman Show

Truman Burbank, may not have been in the know about his predicament, but at last he had the option to move about a massive film set freely and within less than 6 feet of the people around him. Directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey, 1998’s The Truman Show was both a critical and commercial success with three Academy Award nominations and a global box office gross of over $264 million on a $60 million budget. But did you know…

1) The film was originally planned to be much darker. Screenwriter Andrew Niccol’s penned a first draft of the script as early as 1991, then titled “The Malcolm Show’, which was set in a reconstructed version of New York City. “It would be somewhat darker, more paranoid”, commented Weir. “I thought I had to relax it and give the audience, within the terms that the movie was setting up, the feeling that this was possible. If you don’t believe that it’s possible as it’s happening, you won’t go with the film. So I thought, further to that, that this producer played by Ed Harris would be selling a lifestyle. He wouldn’t be presenting something for 24 hours a day that you already live in, because you want to escape via ‘the box.” 

2) Both Weir and Carrey were fully committed to the project, so much so that Carrey took a pretty big pay cut. Rather than his standard $20 million fee at the time, he agreed to do The Truman Show for $12 Million. Weir, meanwhile, waited a full year for Carrey to complete another project before they could start production. During this time Weir and Niccol worked on over 14 drafts of the script and even came up with elaborate backstories for the characters and actors featured within the Truman production.