According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jamie Kennedy, who stars in the WB series JKX: The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, will be taking the lead role in the second installment in The Mask franchise, which is based on the Dark Horse comic series.  The first film in the series, which starred Jim Carrey, was extremely successful -- so successful in making Carrey a major star that he became 'too big' to star in a sequel.  The sequel, now known as The Son Of The Mask, languished for years in development hell at New Line Cinema waiting for the right combination of director and star to come along.  Now Larry Guterman is slated to direct Jamie Kennedy (who played supporting roles in Three Kings, Bowfinger, and the Scream films) in Son Of The Mask, which will begin shooting this summer and which should be released sometime in 2004, a decade after The Mask first hit the screen in 1994.

Kennedy will not play Stanley Ipkis, the mild-mannered bank clerk that Jim Carrey portrayed in the first film.  Son Of The Mask instead centers on a young cartoonist (Kennedy) named Tim Avery (an obvious homage to madcap cartoon director Tex Avery) -- and one of the set piece scenes in the script reportedly features Avery's infant son putting on the mask of Loki.