I can see Jim Carrey, but Sean Penn? Seems weird to me!

Sean Penn has signed on to star in the upcoming film, The Three Stooges, playing Larry. Jim Carrey is in negotiations to play Curly and Benicio del Toro is possibly being considered to play the trio’s slap-stick leader, Moe, Hollywood Reporter reports.

The film — which will not be a biopic but a fictional treatment that will be updated for modern audiences — has been an ongoing project of the Farrelly brothers and MGM for years.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly — who have been behind such films as Dumb & Dumber, There’s Something About Mary and The Heartbreak Kid — wrote the original script, which was at one point structured similarly to the Stooges’ classic short films by featuring a story that would’ve spanned over three installments of roughly 30 minutes each. They have since streamlined it into a single narrative.

“When the economy started turning, we felt like the world could use a Stooges slapfest,” Peter said last year. “Bobby and I haven’t done a real physical comedy in a while, and it’s the most exciting thing we could think of now, to have people go to the movie, see some great slapstick fun family humor.”

MGM plans to start production in the fall for a 2010 release slot.

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So cute!

Splash

The weather did it.

That was the spin from Hollywood as one high-profile film (see Jim Carrey’s Yes Man) after another (see Will Smith’s Seven Pounds) landed with a thud at the weekend box office.

“I’m of the philosophy any real moviegoer would walk through a blizzard to see the movie they wanted to see,” Exhibitor Relations’ Jeff Bock said today.

Certainly the weather, which was nasty, especially in the East, didn’t detour the art-house crowd from The Wrestler, Gran Torino, Doubt and Frost/Nixon, all of which did well in limited release.

Of course, maybe conditions were more brutal at multiplexes showing Yes Man. The grosses sure were.

On paper, yes, Yes Man finished No. 1 in the weekend standings. But the comedy’s estimated $18.2 million Friday-Sunday gross was down 40 percent from the take of last weekend’s No. 1 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and down 60 percent from the take of the same weekend’s No. 1 film from last year, National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

For Carrey, Bock said, Yes Man was “a return to form that just did not pan out—this opened worse than The Cable Guy [$19.8 million debut in 1996].”

Yes Man came up short when judged against nearly any classic Carrey comedy, from Bruce Almighty ($68 million) to Yes Man’s spiritual forerunner, Liar Liar ($31.4 million).

For Smith, the most reliable of box-office draws, Seven Pounds, Bock predicted, will be the star’s first movie since 2001′s Ali to fail to gross at least $100 million overall.

The drama, from the same director as Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness, debuted with $16 million, down about $10 million from Happyness’ opening on nearly the same weekend in December 2006.

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What do you think of Jenny McCarthy’s hair?

Tom Cruise isn’t the only actor who frowns upon the use of anti-depressant drugs.

“At the risk of like opening up the whole Tom Cruise Prozac argument, you know, I don’t disagree in many ways,” Jim Carrey said. “I think Prozac and things like that are very valuable to people for short periods of time. But I believe if you’re on them for an extended period of time, you never get to the problem.

“You never get to see what the problem is, because everything is just kind of OK,” he said. “And so, you don’t deal. And people deal when they get desperate.”

Carrey’s solution: “Supplements,” he said.

“It is vitamins. But it’s also certain elements of the brain like Tyrosine and hydroxytryptophan that they’re treating depression with now,” he said. “It is a natural substance that’s in your brain. Instead of being a Serotonin inhibitor, which just uses the serotonin you have and Prozac and things like that — it just uses the Serotonin you have and it doesn’t allow it go back into the receptor.

“It metabolizes your serotonin after a while and you have to keep taking more and more to feel good.

“This actually creates dopamine and creates serotonin,” Carrey continued. “It’s a wonderful thing. It’s amazing. I’m going to talk a lot about it in the near future.”

Carrey said his girlfriend Jenny McCarthy also helps him.

He recalled meeting her years ago at David Spade’s birthday party.

“She looked at me, and she said, ‘You just looked so peaceful that I had to come and talk to you,” he told King. “I mean, I’d seen her a bunch of times, never in person. But I just thought — well, she’s nothing like the persona, like the Singled Out person that I met — or that I knew, that I had seen.”

He said they have no plans to wed.

“I love Jenny very much, and we have a great relationship. And we’ve both been married a couple times,” the Yes Man star said. “I like it the way it is, and I think she likes it the way it is.”

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Splash, WENN

The first official production photo from the new Jim Carrey comedy I Love You Phillip Morris has been revealed on JimCarreyOnline. Adapted from Steve McVicker’s 2003 novel, and based on a true story. Carrey plays Russell, a criminal who falls in love with his cell mate, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). After Morris’ release from prison, Russell attempts a variety of bizarre prison escapes in hopes of reuniting with the love of his life. The movie was apparently pitched as “Catch Me if You Can meets Brokeback Mountain“. The screenplay was witten by the team who did Bad Santa. You can read the actual book description below.

Steven Russell possessed unusual talents-he was a jailhouse Houdini with a specialty in fraud. Staging his escapes on a series of Friday the thirteenths, he managed to outwit the Texas criminal justice experts in four ingenious jailbreaks. The first time, he simply waved a walkie-talkie convincingly and was buzzed out by an affable guard. Another time he used a green pen and a bucket of water to concoct surgical scrubs and sauntered out. His ensuing escapes grew more audacious, as did his plans to reunite with his co-convict lover. Award-winning journalist Steve McVicker captures with a pitch-perfect blend of humor and disbelief the real-life story of Steven Russell, a con man so shrewd, relentless, and incorrigible that he’d be walking free today, if it weren’t for his fatal aw-he’s in love with a man named Phillip Morris. Written with exclusive cooperation and disclosure from Russell, who’s serving 45 years plus 99 years in a maximum-security jail (at least, for now), I Love You Phillip Morris tells an oddball American tall tale of what can happen when mocking the law, a daredevil spirit, and undying love collide.

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