Trivia / Son of the Mask

• Box Office Bomb: Cost $84 million to make, but made back only $58.6 million at the box office.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In a rare case where a live-action movie gets this treatment, the Brazilian dub features rocker Supla as Loki.
• Creator Killer: Neither director Lawrence Guterman nor writer Lance Khazei have made another movie ever since.
• DVD Commentary: By Kennedy, Guterman and Khazei.
• Executive Meddling: According to Jamie Kennedy on his YouTube channel as well as Lawrence Guterman, the film was originally supposed to be a more PG-13-oriented movie that was supposedly an improvement over the version that we were exposed to today, but unfortunately, New Line Cinema didn't seem to like that cut and drastically changed the movie into its more sanitized, PG-rated state.
• Franchise Killer: After this movie came out, Dark Horse Entertainment (the publisher of the original "The Mask" comics) didn't make or release anything Mask related for almost a decade, until 2014, when Itty Bitty Mask was released.
• Money, Dear Boy: Jamie Kennedy confirmed on his podcast that he was initially hesitant to take the role and originally had turned it down. Then the studio came back and offered him double their original offer and guarantee a higher payday for subsequent sequels if they happened.
• Role Reprise: Ben Stein as Dr. Neuman, the only actor from the first movie to appear in this one.
• Sequel Gap: 11 years between this and The Mask.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Jamie Kennedy, who got relegated to doing direct-to-DVD and TV movies since the film's release. Though he went on to star in Kickin' It Old School in 2007, it would still be about five years before he would do another theatrical role.
  • A variant with Traylor Howard: she had already made her debut as Natalie Teeger on Monk about a month before Son of the Mask came out, and continued to play the part for the remaining five full seasons of the show. That said, this did kill her already not very successful film career, as she never did do any movies after this.
  • Comedian Steven Wright has seen his career stall significantly after this film came out.
• What Could Have Been:
  • An early idea was that Lt. Kellaway finds the mask, dons it, and becomes the next villain, also at one point, the studio worked with the idea of making the sequel about a woman (possibly Peggy) wearing the Mask.
    • Jim Carrey, Cameron Diaz, and the original film's director, Chuck Russell were attached to make a sequel in the 90s, but then Jim Carrey swore he'd never make another sequel after Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Famously, Nintendo Power ran a competition in the magazine to celebrate the release of The Mask, with the prize being a Contest Winner Cameo in Mask II. They apologized to the competition's winner in the final issue (the winner, Nathan Runk, received a bunch of swag and games valued over $5,000 instead and claimed he got the better deal).
  • The film was meant to be a stand-alone film meant for a more adult audience called Baby Formula which was described as a mix of Rosemary's Baby and Who Framed Roger Rabbit that was retooled into this film as a sequel to The Mask.
  • Actors such as Jack Black and Ryan Reynolds were considered for the role of Tim.
  • Jamie Kennedy has been explaining in detail how he became involved with the film and has said that New Line had so much faith in Son of the Mask that they had two more Mask sequels and even a prequel planned and various other projects in mind for him.
• Working Title: According to Alan Cumming, the working titles for this film were Attack of the Mask and Curse of the Mask.

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