Believe It or Not! Burton and Carrey pair up

Two of Hollywood's most eccentric talents, Tim Burton and Jim Carrey, are pairing up for a film about another unconventional character.

Burton, who this year found huge critical and commercial success with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, will direct an action-adventure film about American explorer and newspaper cartoonist Robert Ripley.

Carrey, most recently seen as the evil Count Olaf in 2004's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, will play the main character.

Ripley became famous worldwide in the 1920s for Believe It or Not!, a cartoon series about unusual facts from around the globe. Nicknamed the "modern Marco Polo" because he travelled in over 200 countries, Ripley was determined to search anywhere to find the quirkiest facts for his cartoon series.

"It is a great fit for both Jim and Tim, because it is a visual action-adventure setting, but a character with emotion, humanity and comedic sensibilities, all qualities Jim is best at," said Brad Weston, production copresident for Paramount, the studio behind the project.

The film is written by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, who both worked on Burton's Ed Wood and Milos Forman's Man on the Moon which starred Carrey.

Filming is scheduled to start in London next October. The movie is planned for release in late 2007.

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