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| - Director Tom Shadyac focused on ensuring the film made a positive environmental impact during filming and, along with Universal Studios, stressed the animals' conditions were acceptable despite PETA objections. Evan Almighty had its premiere on June 10, 2007. An immense budget made the film the most expensive comedy film produced at the time. The film received generally negative reviews, and earned $31.2 million domestically in its opening weekend, recouping a fraction of its estimated $200 million budget.
- The film's screenplay was originally titled The Passion of the Ark, and was written by Bobby Florsheim and Josh Stolberg. It became the subject of a seven-studio bidding war in April 2004. The script was sold to Sony Pictures in a deal worth $2,500,000 plus a percentage of the profits, a record for a Spec script from previously unproduced writers. Universal Studios immediately made a deal to co-produce the script with Sony and have Steve Oedekerk rewrite it into the sequel to Bruce Almighty. Steve Oedekerk had previously been involved with Bruce Almighty as an executive producer and co-writer of the screenplay (with Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, who wrote the story). The studio later discarded the original The Passion of the Ark script completely, and Oedekerk fashioned a new script from s
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