Having regularly come under fire for spending obscene amounts of money on projects that don’t need to cost anywhere near as much as they do, it would appear that Netflix really has a limit after all, with the streaming service simply refusing flat-out to fund the most expensive rom-com in history.
The current benchmark was set over a decade ago by James L. Brooks’ How do You Know, the colossal flop which came in at an eye-watering $120 million, the majority of which was funneled directly into the pockets of its writer and director, as well as the A-list ensemble that featured Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson.
Genre legend Nancy Meyers was already in line to exceed that total when it was revealed that the filmmaker behind Father of the Bride, What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, and The Holiday had secured a whopping investment of $130 million to craft a Netflix original that would see Wilson double down on his exorbitant rom-com history alongside Scarlett Johansson, Michael Fassbender, and Penelope Cruz.
However, even Netflix knows when enough is enough, and after being locked in negotiations with Meyers over her desires to see the production costs swell to $150 million, the company has opted to completely pull the plug and abandon ship instead. There’s always the chance another streamer or studio could step in and save the project – tentatively known as Paris Paramount – from the scrapheap, but that volume of finance being splurged on a lightweight star-studded comic caper seems insane.