Jim Carrey is in talks for a Grinch sequel, 26 years after the first one
Universal and Ron Howard are developing a follow-up to the 2000 holiday blockbuster, with Carrey in talks to return, the Curb Your Enthusiasm writers on script, and that brutal makeup the big question.
So this is happening. Twenty-six years after Jim Carrey went green and stole Christmas, Universal wants him to do it again.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on June 18, and the rest of the trades fell in line within the hour. Universal and Ron Howard‘s Imagine Entertainment are developing a sequel to 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with Carrey in talks to climb back up Mount Crumpit and Howard returning to direct. No title yet, no release date, no production window. Just the three names that matter and a lot of people suddenly feeling very old.
Why Jim Carrey hated the original Grinch makeup
Here’s the part anyone who’s followed Carrey on this saw coming.
That Grinch suit was misery. The original makeup won Rick Baker an Oscar, and it also reportedly drove Carrey to the edge, hours a day buried under yak hair and green foam while a CIA-trained specialist was brought in to teach him how to tolerate it. He’s talked about it for years. Back in 2024 he told ComicBook.com that he’d consider coming back only if they could “figure out the Grinch,“ because last time he could hardly breathe in the getup and basically white-knuckled it on a loop of “it’s for the kids.“
So if this moves, the makeup is the conversation. Carrey’s floated motion capture as the way he’d do it now, which makes sense for a 64-year-old who already spent one shoot in sensory hell. And it would be a very 2026 solution to a very 2000 problem.
The Curb Your Enthusiasm writers scripting the Grinch sequel
The casting headline is Carrey. The interesting part is the script.
Universal handed it to Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel, a murderers’ row out of Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Barry, Veep, and Silicon Valley among them. That’s a sharper, more acidic comedy pedigree than you’d expect on a kids’ Christmas movie, and it tells you something about the tone they’re chasing. The first film already leaned cynical, a whole subplot about Whoville’s gift-grubbing consumerism aimed squarely over the kids’ heads at the parents. Hand the sequel to the Larry David bench and that streak is not getting narrower.
There’s a wrinkle worth knowing, though. All three also wrote 2003’s The Cat in the Hat, the Mike Myers Seuss adaptation so reviled it helped Seuss’s widow slam the door on live-action Seuss films for years. Same trio, wildly different outcome. Make of that what you want.
Will Taylor Momsen return as Cindy Lou Who?
The one name nobody’s confirmed is the one fans actually want.
Taylor Momsen was seven when she played Cindy Lou Who, and she’s spent the years since trading acting for fronting the rock band The Pretty Reckless.
She and Carrey reunited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last November and people lost it. But asked about a sequel earlier this year, Momsen said flatly that nothing was happening as far as she knew, and added “some things don’t touch.“ That was before today’s news, so her read may be due for an update. Or she meant it.
This is early. “In talks” and “developing” are the two softest words in a trade report, and plenty of projects with bigger names attached die quietly in exactly this phase. But the original was the top domestic movie of its entire year with $260 million, on its way to $345 million worldwide, it’s been parked on cable every December for a quarter century, and a green Carrey is about as close to printed money as the holiday calendar gets. Universal knows what it’s sitting on. Whether Carrey wants back in that suit badly enough to find out is the thing to watch.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
The Hollywood Reporter (June 18, 2026), which broke the story, verified for the sequel development, Carrey in talks, Ron Howard directing, Brian Grazer producing, and the Berg/Schaffer/Mandel writing team
Variety (June 18, 2026), Brent Lang reporting, verified for the original’s $345 million-plus gross, the year’s top domestic spot, and the Cat in the Hat writing connection
ComicBook.com (2024 interview, recirculated June 18, 2026), verified for Carrey’s comments on the excruciating makeup process and his interest in returning
TMZ (June 18, 2026), verified for Carrey expected to star and the uncertainty around returning cast members
NY Post (2026), verified for Taylor Momsen’s “some things don’t touch” comments and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame reunion