Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a source of Christmas cheer for countless people around the world, but the movie had to meet some surprisingly specific conditions in order to be made. Based on Dr. Seuss’ eponymous 1957 children’s book and its 1966 animated movie, The Grinch focuses upon the plot of the grump, Yuletide-loathing outcast played by Jim Carrey, and his plot to steal Christmas from the denizens of Whoville on Christmas Eve.
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Dr. Seuss passed away in 1991, which meant that any negotiations for film and TV adaptations of his literary works had to be run by the Seuss estate, and specifically his widow Audrey Geisel. Multiple Hollywood studios had long been clamoring for the chance to adapt The Grinch to live-action, and in July of 1998, Geisel finally put the film rights for The Grinch up for auction. However, this would be no ordinary Hollywood bidding war, with Geisel sending out a letter via her agents to prospective buyers of some very precisely pinned-down demands, which the eventually successful buyer Universal Pictures had to meet.
The Grinch Came With a Sizeable Price Tag
The first big challenge for any studio hoping to bring the Grinch to life on the big screen was to determine who was the most willing to open their checkbook to the Seuss estate. In her letter laying out her stipulations to producers, Audrey Geisel set a price tag of $5 million for the film rights to The Grinch. While that might seem like a bargain, the real money for all things Dr. Seuss was to be found in both box office numbers and ancillary sources like merchandising, and Geisel’s conditions made note of this.
In addition to the base price for the rights to The Grinch, Geisel also required the studio to give the Seuss estate a cut of 4% of the movie’s total box-office revenue, along with 50% of merchandising revenue and 70% from book tie-ins to the movie. Considering the long-standing popularity of The Grinch in both Dr. Suess’ original book and the 1966 animated movie directed by Chuck Jones, Geisel’s financial demands for selling the film rights are understandable, and clearly anticipated the film adaptation being a major success. In the end, considering the box office alone of Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Grinch, it stands to reason that the Seuss estate made (and probably continues to make) quite a lot of money from it.
[RELATED: The Grinch: Dr. Seuss Graphic Novel Tells a New Grinch Story]
The Grinch Had to Have a Very Specific Kind of Director in Mind
When it came to assembling the actual production team of The Grinch, Audrey Geisel also had both director and writer approval. As it turns out, Geisel had one very specific condition in mind for whoever would write and direct The Grinch: both had to have earned at least $1 million from a previous film project. Geisel’s reasoning likely stems from her recognizing the potential of The Grinch to become a major holiday season tentpole hit, and she therefore wanted a filmmaker and writer on board who had experience in making big-budget blockbusters.
In the end, The Grinch was penned by screenwriting duo Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. The pair had previously cowritten the 1988 animated/live-action hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and that movie’s popularity was certainly a major notch in Price and Seaman’s belt, which likely led to both taking home major earnings from the movie along with commanding significant paydays on subsequent projects (including their screenwriting roles in 1999’s infamous bomb Wild Wild West).
Meanwhile, director Ron Howard also had plenty of previous experience directing both family-friendly fantasy adventures like 1988’s Willow, and big-budget blockbusters like 1995’s Apollo 13. Howard’s pedigree as a filmmaker had long since put him in the upper echelon of Hollywood’s director A-list, which made bringing him on as director of The Grinch well within Geisel’s contractual conditions.
The Grinch’s Casting Options Were Really Narrow
In addition to Geisel’s specifications for The Grinch‘s writer and director, she also had a very specific vision for who should play the Grinch himself. Per Geisel’s letter outlining the Seuss estate’s requirements for the movie, the actor cast in the role had to be of a very particular height and frame, with Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and Dustin Hoffman name-dropped as templates. Essentially, any actor not of a relatively similar stature as them would not be approved by the Seuss estate.
Jim Carrey’s name being mentioned as a general fit in Geisel’s letter was evidently one that Universal Pictures took quite seriously, with Carrey ultimately being cast as the “Mean One.” The ’90s were Jim Carrey’s heyday as Hollywood’s reigning funnyman and king of physical comedy. With Carrey’s zany antics seen in such comedy hits as the Ace Ventura movies, Dumb and Dumber, The Mask, and Liar Liar, his on-camera flexibility and animation often resembled a flesh-and-blood cartoon. The makers of The Grinch clearly saw the potential of Jim Carrey’s style of wackiness and animated physical antics to the role (even under a heavy suit and layers upon layers of make-up), leading to Carrey’s casting as the titular Grinch.
While The Grinch was a big Christmas box office hit upon its release, only one other live-action Dr. Seuss movie was subsequently produced, 2003’s The Cat in the Hat. That movie’s horrendous reception and box office letdown ($133 million worldwide compared to The Grinch‘s $346.5 million) coupled with the surprisingly adult-skewing humor of the movie led to Geisel putting the brakes on any further live-action Dr. Seuss movies.
Dr. Seuss’ stories have nonetheless still lived on cinematically in animated movies like Horton Hears a Who, The Lorax, and 2018’s animated adaptation of The Grinch. Meanwhile, though Ron Howard’s live-action version of The Grinch may have had to jump through a series of unusually specific hoops to get made, it ultimately succeeded in making it to the big screen and continues to make the hearts of viewers around the world grow three sizes every Christmas season.
