Ron Howard knew the Grinch sequel could go ahead when he realised Jim Carrey wouldn't need to spend hours in the make-up chair.
It was revealed in June that the director is reuniting with the 64-year-old actor for a sequel to 2000's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the 72-year-old filmmaker has now shared his excitement for the project and how he knew it was a possibility thanks to technological advances, which mean the star won't have to undergo hours of prosthetics and cosmetic changes to play the green-hued character.
Speaking at the Hamptons International Film Festival over the weekend, Ron said of the first movie: “It was a really hard movie to make, a real struggle. Jim really did struggle with the make-up.
“Now, for the last 10 years, even he did a [motion-capture] movie with Bob Zemeckis [A Christmas Carol], so usually you could recreate that make-up.
"In rehearsals [for The Grinch], when he was unencumbered by the make-up, it was another level of the Grinch. So that’s exciting.
"And I registered that a while back just as somebody who works with the tech to know, ‘Hey, I can free him up a lot now.’ But I just didn’t have an idea. I didn’t have the take.
“And literally about, I don’t know, a year ago, just an idea popped into my head - which I’m not going to tell you.
“But I got excited about it and I began to think it through. Then I went to [producing partner] Brian [Grazer] first. He got excited about it.”
While the project is still in the early stages, the "very funny writers" who came in to "punch up" the original movie, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel, are all on board.
Praising the "really brilliant guys", Ron said: "They’re no longer a team, but they all want to come together and work on it because they love the take.
"And Jim believes in it, but his attitude is - correctly - we have to know we are really going to make something that’s great. None of us need to make a sequel. If we can make a movie that we love... he articulated that, I share that, and we’ll see how we do.”
Jim previously admitted he threatened to quit How the Grinch Stole Christmas because of the lengthy transformation process.
He told Vulture last year: “The first day in make-up took eight hours. And I went into the trailer and asked Ron and Brian to come in, and I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do the movie and I was quitting.”
Ron explained how they eventually brought in Richard Marcinko, a man who "trained the military on enduring imprisonment and torture", to help Jim cope with the process.
Jim added: “But what really helped me through the make-up process, which they eventually pulled down to about three hours, was the Bee Gees.
“I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue. Their music is so joyful. I’ve never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him.”