$100 million, zero TV shows: Why Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Amazon deal hasn't paid off

Telegraph

14-04-2025

Less than 48 hours after dominating the 2019 Emmys – with four wins for her hit series, Fleabag – Phoebe Waller-Bridge was confirmed in her status as the world's hottest TV writer.
Amazon proudly announced that it had signed her up to a lucrative 'golden handcuffs' deal, worth a reported $20 million (£15 million) each year, to create new series for Prime Video. Jennifer Salke, then the head of Amazon Studios, hailed the Fleabag creator as 'clever, brilliant, generous and a virtuoso on multiple fronts'.
That deal was renewed in 2022, and again (albeit on looser, less lucrative terms) in the past few months. Yet in the six years since she initially signed with Amazon, nothing Waller-Bridge has made as part of her contract has yet made it to air. The 39-year-old has earned the sharp end of $100 million without any real achievements to show for it.
Her first big project was a new version of 'married spies' thriller Mr & Mrs Smith, in which she would write with and act opposite Donald Glover, but that soon foundered amid reports that the two stars did not see eye-to-eye. Waller-Bridge was replaced on screen by Maya Erskine, and she did not even get a writing credit, suggesting none of her material had made the cut. 'Amazon stuck with him and moved her out,' says an insider. 'Maybe that is somewhat indicative of where she is with Amazon at the moment.'
Unfazed by the setback – plus the fact that Waller-Bridge helped rewrite Daniel Craig's swansong as James Bond, No Time to Die, and starred in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny outside her deal – Amazon later announced that Waller-Bridge would create a series based on the Tomb Raider video games.
It should have been the perfect combination: Waller-Bridge was a keen gamer growing up and idolised the no-nonsense protagonist Lara Croft, who has been played in film versions by Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander, but wanted to put a new twist on a character often accused of being a cartoonish male fantasy of a female hero.
'She had an attitude. She was very deliberate in what she wanted to do,' Waller-Bridge told Vanity Fair in June 2023. 'The opportunity to have… a female action character…. Having worked on Bond and having worked as an actor on Indy, I feel like I've been building up to this. What if I could take the reins on an action franchise, with everything I've learned, with a character I adore, and also just bring back some of that 1990s vibe?'
The only vibes around the series at this point are negative. Puck News, one of the most reliable Hollywood outlets, reported last month that the project had 'gone through two writers' rooms and tens of millions of dollars in development costs', but still has no script. Some reports have suggested that Amazon has shelved Tomb Raider entirely, but The Telegraph understands that the streamer is still committed to the project with Waller-Bridge at the helm.
When Waller-Bridge's deal was originally renewed, in 2022, without anything to show for the previous three years, a TV executive told The Hollywood Reporter that the streaming service was guilty of 'star-f—ing' – i.e. chucking cash at big names without any overarching strategy – and only signed her up again to save face.
For years, Amazon executives have been faced with questions about what exactly Waller-Bridge has been doing to earn her keep. In a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Vernon Sanders, Amazon's TV chief, 'bristled' when asked what she was up to. 'Phoebe has not only fully embraced Tomb Raider and I think is feeling very committed to it, but she's in a writers room right now working on it,' he said. 'She's a perfectionist, so she absolutely wants to make sure that what she does is great and right, but she's proven that when she does deliver, she delivers.'
That was more than two years ago, and still nobody seems quite sure about what, if anything, Waller-Bridge has completed. Prime next-day delivery it ain't.
For her part, Waller-Bridge does not like being described as a perfectionist. 'Happy to be called creatively controlling,' she told Vanity Fair two months after Sanders's comments. 'What I look for in something is that little bit of electricity, of danger or saying something, doing something that hasn't been done before. If I don't feel that, I can plow and plow and plow, I just won't make it.'
She also said that Amazon bosses understood why things have not moved more quickly. 'They've been with me along this process where I'm like, 'I'm getting there, but I want it to be f—ing amazing.' ' Salke appeared to confirm this in October last year. 'When we look at a long-term commitment to a creator like Phoebe — we're so happy now that we retained her,' she told Variety.
But Jeff Bezos's lieutenants will not wait around forever. Salke was abruptly dismissed last month amid a litany of failings, not least the slow progress on a new James Bond film, for which Amazon now has full creative control. One of Salke's last acts was to sign Waller-Bridge up to yet another deal, though this one is said to be much less lucrative and not on an exclusive basis. It is part of a trend in the industry as money becomes tighter for creatives to be paid when projects are delivered, rather than in these 'golden handcuffs' agreements.
From those heights at the 2019 Emmys, when Waller-Bridge won gongs for both her acting and writing, there is a sense that she has become lost and fallen behind fellow star writers, such as James Graham, Jack Thorne and Sharon Horgan. 'She's become very rich out of it but I feel sorry for Phoebe,' says one senior TV executive. 'She's a once-in-a-generation British talent. She was clearly developing stuff and Amazon was knocking it back. The viewer isn't gaining out of it, are they?'
By this executive's telling, much of the problem must lie at the feet of Amazon, which remains a retail giant with a streaming service bolted on. 'It feels like it's part of an old world: where global streamers pay stupid money to take people off the table,' he adds. 'Their most important thing is selling stuff, they don't seem focused on creating a really coherent content strategy.'
Though Amazon has a large, and growing, roster of Prime Video staff in the UK (which has launched hits such as Clarkson's Farm) Waller-Bridge has reported to those in the American mothership as they sought a global mega-hit that would provide a large return on the investment in her. 'When people talk about global shows, what they really mean is shows that are big in the US that become big in other territories around the world,' says an insider. 'The size and scale of those output deals… it is not worth doing a niche, UK public service broadcaster-style show. You are really swinging for the fences on high value international global franchisable formats.
'The US really wanted to find something to break her in America. She had a ton of ideas but none of them really materialised in a big manner that the US thought, 'We would take that, make it better and get US audiences on board with it',' they add. 'I think they were thinking 'What is the US version of Fleabag?' It becomes a Friends or Curb Your Enthusiasm-type show. I don't think that is a direction she was very interested in.'
None of which is to say that Waller-Bridge's creative abilities have deserted her. 'It is certainly true that had she been in the UK making shows, you would have imagined another Killing Eve, Fleabag-type project would have come pretty quickly. For whatever reasons her projects just haven't met Amazon's view of what they expect from a global property.'
Waller-Bridge's hunt for an international hit goes on. As well as Tomb Raider, Waller-Bridge is also said to be working on an adaptation of Sign Here, the 'darkly humorous' debut novel by Claudia Lux about a man in hell who needs to collect one more soul to win ­freedom.
And the fruits of Waller-Bridge's labour will become apparent next month. She has narrated and executive produced a two-part documentary series called Octopus! about Pacific cephalopods. It launches on Prime Video on May 8.