Jim Carrey was reportedly the first choice to play Buddy However, by the time the film went into production, Carrey had moved on from the role. Interestingly enough, Carrey did end up playing another iconic Christmas character: the Grinch in 2000's How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The first script for Elf was written way back in 1993 with Jim Carrey in mind to play Buddy. However, as the project took years to get off the ground, The Mask star never ended up taking on the role.
The original script for the movie in the early 1990s had comedian Jim Carrey chosen to star in the role of Buddy the Elf. Turns out, Carrey ended up playing a very different Christmas character in the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Who was supposed to play Elf instead of Will Ferrell?
Berenbaum finished the first draft of Elf in 1993 with In Living Color alum, Jim Carrey in mind for the lead role, with a much darker undertone of the film — but Carey wasn't meant to be in the role. The version featuring Carey was never made, and the script sat idle for years.
1. Jim Carrey as Buddy the Elf in Elf. The script for Elf was first written in 1993, and at the time, Carrey was attached to star in it. However, the movie did not immediately go into production, and by the time it did in 2003, Carrey was no longer interested in the role.
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Why did Will Ferrell refuse to do Elf 2?
Will Ferrell turned down a reported $29 million to make a sequel to "Elf." He told THR he turned it down because he couldn't promote it from "an honest place." Last year, his "Elf" costar James Caan said Ferrell and director Jon Favreau didn't get along.
Garry Shandling was offered the role of Walter Hobbs but declined. Wanda Sykes was originally cast as the Gimbels manager Wanda but later dropped out; the manager's name tag in the film still bears the name "Wanda". Terry Zwigoff was offered to direct the film, but he turned it down in favor of Bad Santa (2003).
Fun fact: Producers wanted to feature the famous Macy's 34th street location, the largest store in the world, but Macy's refused to have their name used. So they settled on Gimbels, a now defunct NY department store–the exterior was shot at 5th Avenue and E 30th St and decorated with CGI.
“I had no idea. The first time we tested the movie we did two screenings. We did one that was more of a family focused audience, and it worked great with them. And then my manager Jimmy called me.
While workshopping Elf, Favreau said, "If I made the world that he (Buddy) was from as though he grew up as an elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, one of those Rankin/Bass Christmas specials I grew up with, then everything fell into place tonally." Along with shifting the thematic style away from PG-13 to PG ...
Interestingly, while the movie is set in New York City and the North Pole, many interior shots were filmed in an abandoned mental hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Riverview Hospital, located in Coquitlam, east of Vancouver, served as the backdrop for these scenes.
I was only 21 when I made that movie. I remember sitting—I was at my parents' house because I basically just dropped out of college to be an actor—and I remember sitting at my parents' house reading that script and laughing out loud. Since then, I've seen that that's a good sign." Deschanel said.
As Favreau revealed to ABC News, the Elf team asked Macy's if they could use the store for the movie, but Macy's declined. He told the publication: "Because we're using a Santa, of course, everybody thinks Macy's. "But Macy's didn't like the idea that there was a fake Santa working there.
Elf wears its era much more lightly, combining fantasy elements with a kind of twinkling Miracle on 34th Street charm in a way that would feel wildly risky in less capable hands. But this movie was filmed in New York City at the end of 2002—of course 9/11 is there if you look for it.
Who was supposed to be the Grinch before Jim Carrey?
Before Carrey was cast as the Grinch, Jack Nicholson and Eddie Murphy were both considered. Josh Ryan Evans as the eight-year-old Grinch (his final film role before his death in 2002).
Elf was Will Ferrell's second box office hit. He reportedly received a whopping salary of $17 million for that film alone, more on par with what his talents would dictate in the mid-2000s. He was allegedly offered $29 million to act in an Elf sequel, but couldn't get his heart into it, so he turned it down.
Warner Bros. When the security guards at Walter's office throw Buddy out, they suggest he go back to Santaland at Gimbels. The highly festive store is heavily featured throughout the rest of "Elf," but viewers may not have realized that Gimbels was a real department store in New York City that closed in 1986.
To create the full forced perspective effect, Ferrell was placed several feet further ahead in the foreground of every scene with his co-stars well behind him, though the camera angle makes it look like they're next to each other.
There's plenty of real New York on display of course, but most of the interiors were filmed in an abandoned mental hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Trivia. Wanda announcing to the employees The character of Wanda was originally cast to Wanda Sykes, but she had to drop out. The producers did not know she was replaced, hence the reason the character's nametag reads "Wanda."
These scenes were filmed in early December 2002, so New York was already looking festive. There is an unforgettable scene of Ferrell's character, after arriving in the city, spotting a man with a white beard wearing a red jogging suit, and calling him Santa.
“I had to dye my hair blonde for a screen test for a movie that never happened before I did Elf,” Deschanel told Stylecaster in a March 2019 interview. “I went in for the meeting for Elf, and then I asked them, 'Could I dye my hair back to my natural color?
So if “Elf” wanted to film at the Santaland in Macy's, or even mention Macy's in the movie, the scene had to go. “We had to think long and hard about it,” Favreau told Rolling Stone in 2013. “We ended up filming it in the cafeteria of a mental hospital in Vancouver instead of Macy's …
The teams worked with a two-thirds scale that would allow Ferrell to seem bigger than his elven counterparts. Afterward, the crew would adjust the height of the cameras and objects to bring the optical illusion to life.
