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Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal to star in ‘Damn Yankees’

The long gestating plans to remake “Damn Yankees” have finally come to fruition with the news that Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal will play the leads.
By  · Published on February 27th, 2009

If baseball fans nationwide were to vote on a favorite musical chances are it’d be Damn Yankees. After all we who don’t worship at the altar of all things pinstriped are united by our disdain for the team’s free spending ways and obscene hoarding of talent.

So it’s fitting that news of the much talked about Damn Yankees remake finally coming to fruition has been announced just as the MLB spring training schedule starts heating up. Variety reports Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal have been attached to star as the devil and hero Joe Boyd respectively, in the timeless story of a fan of the Washington Senators who sells his soul to be transformed into a ballplayer and help his team beat the Yankees.

Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel will write the script, to be produced for New Line by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the team behind Hairspray. No directly is currently attached and the all-important role of Lola, the femme fatale sent to seduce Joe, has not yet been cast.

This is a rare remake that actually seems promising. The show’s fun and the 1958 film by George Abbott and Stanley Donen isn’t such a revered canonical work that it can’t be modernized. Plus, as his cover of “I Am the Walrus” on “In My Life” proved, Carrey can sing.