Jim Carrey might be a no-show on red carpet promoting his new film, “Kick-Ass 2.”
The summer sequel hits theaters August 16, but the actor tweeted Sunday that after the Sandy Hook massacre, he “cannot support that level of violence” in “good conscience.”
“I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart,” he said on his official Twitter account. Carrey said on Twitter that he shot his scenes about one month before the school shooting that killed 20 children and six educators.
The Golden Globe winner, who plays the role of Col. Stars and Stripes, also apologized to his colleagues involved with the film. Chloe Grace Moretz and Aaron Taylor-Johnson star alongside Carrey in the movie, which focuses on Kick-Ass, a costumed high school hero who teams up with a group of normal citizens to fight crime.
msnbc reached out to Carrey’s publicist and Universal Pictures for a comment, but did not hear back. (Both msnbc and Universal Pictures are owned by Comcast.)
Mark Millar, the writer behind the original comic and executive producer on the movie, urged Carrey to reconsider his position late Sunday in a blog posted to his website. But he didn’t let him off the hook for shying away from promotion, pointing out that Carrey knew what he was getting into by signing up for the script.
“As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I’m baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn’t in the screenplay eighteen months ago. Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin,” Millar wrote. “A sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much.”
“Like Jim, I’m horrified by real-life violence,” Millar continued, “but Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production!” The writer argued violence in movies doesn’t lead to more violence in real-life. “Ultimately, this is his decision, but I’ve never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real-life. Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can’t be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action-movie.”
Carrey’s character is a Born Again Christian and refuses to fire a gun–an aspect of the script, according to Millar, that “ironically” first attracted Carrey to the role.
Sarah Muller