It almost feels like an April Fool’s joke, but it’s true. Despite her only contribution to television since Killing Eve being an upcoming two-part documentary series called Octopus!, Amazon still threw her some more cash. Granted, it’s a “nonexclusive first look… for significantly less money,” as Matt Belloni first noted in his Puck newsletter, but few women have failed upwards as magnificently as Waller-Bridge. You’ll recall she backed out of Mr. And Mrs. Smith with Donald Glover (who also has an expensive deal with Amazon, but at least he’s managed to get two shows on the board). Her take on Tomb Raider has been in the works for years and seemed like it might finally be gaining some traction with the casting of Game Of Thrones‘ Sophie Turner in the lead role. But as Puck reported last week, the show “has now gone through two writers rooms and tens of millions of dollars in development costs. There’s still no script.”
It has to rankle someone at Amazon that yet another potentially lucrative IP franchise is being squandered in development hell. After all, that’s what caused the big shake-up over there regarding James Bond. Jennifer Salke, the former exec who is being (at least partially) blamed for fumbling Bond so long, is the one who gave Waller-Bridge her initial deal and re-upped it in 2023. Speaking with Variety late last year, Salke insisted she was still happy being in a long-term commitment with Waller-Bridge, though her comment typically came with a side of word salad: “She went off to do a movie, there are things that happened—if people want to go take an accounting of what deals they were able to get value out of or not, there’s still probably a lot to do there,” Salke said vaguely. “But I think we’re looking at converting a lot of those deals to a very performance-based model, based on what they accomplish. And that’s been received very well because you’ve got to change with the times.”
Despite this prescient wisdom, Salke herself didn’t change too much as she locked in this third deal with Phoebe Waller-Bridge in November 2024, a few months before her own exit (per Deadline). All told, the writer-performer is reported to have eked somewhere in the $100 million range out of the megacorp in her overall deal, so even if the first look version is “significantly less,” any more money is still a pretty significant cherry on top. Fans may be tempted to say the person who created Fleabag should get whatever she wants; some on social media have already been calling Waller-Bridge their “favorite scammer.” Hopefully, those people tune in to see her narrate her first and only Amazon project Octopus!, which premieres May 8; let’s see if we can trick Amazon into giving her even more money!
