Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | April 22, 2025
As The Telegraph recounted this week — and as Puck likes to remind readers from time to time — Amazon’s mega-deal with Phoebe Waller-Bridge has become one of the most expensive misfires in recent Hollywood history. Hoping to lock down the writer and creator of the critically beloved Fleabag, Amazon signed her to a deal worth $20 million a year after she cleaned up at the 2019 Emmys.
Since then, the streamer has renewed the agreement twice (the second time reportedly on less generous terms), and yet, there’s been virtually nothing to show for it. Waller-Bridge was originally slated to co-create Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover but exited the project over creative differences. She’s also been working on a Tomb Raider series for Amazon for years — a project that may or may not have been quietly shelved. Outside of Amazon, her only writing credit since Fleabag was a script polish on No Time to Die, and she starred in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, neither of which were part of the deal.
(Not that this is a competition, but it is worth noting that Waller-Bridge’s contemporary Sharon Horgan has created three series, starred in one, and has two more on the way, one for HBO and another for Amazon in that same period.)
Reports suggest the holdup comes down to what some call “perfectionism” — or, as Waller-Bridge prefers, being “creatively controlling.” Either way, the partnership has so far cost Amazon over $100 million and yielded… nothing. Until now.
At last, Waller-Bridge is making good — sort of — with Octopus!, a two-part nature documentary about Pacific cephalopods, which she narrates and executive produces. (Alas, it’s not a spicy sex comedy about a handsy bloke in London.) It drops on Prime Video May 8.
So yes, while some view this as a textbook dealmaking disaster, the more romantically inclined among us might see it differently: as a brilliant artist squeezing $100 million out of one of the richest companies on Earth. Good for Phoebe.
