Netflix and Amazon locked in $100 million bidding war for star-studded heist thriller packing a pair of streaming’s biggest draws

It’s hard to quantify who or what can be deemed a certifiable draw on streaming, but if you take nothing but the data into account, then Chris Hemsworth and Pedro Pascal are definitely up there.

In the case of the former, both of his Extraction movies rank among Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched original features of all-time, while even the middling Spiderhead proved to be a massive success for the platform.

When it comes to the latter, superhero story We Can Be Heroes is also one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits, while Wonder Woman 1984 shattered records when it debuted on Max, and we can’t forget that The Mandalorian reigns as arguably Disney Plus’ flagship original, never mind The Last of Us continuing to draw in a substantial crowd on-demand.

With that in mind, you can understand why Netflix and Amazon are locked in a $100 million bidding war for in-development heist thriller Crime 101, per Deadline. Hemsworth and Pascal are both attached to the tale of jewel heists taking place up and down the country, which the authorities have linked to Colombian cartels.

Based on the novella by Don Winslow, with American Animals director Bart Layton attached behind the camera, word is that Amazon has edged ahead as vast amounts of money get thrown onto the table. Hemsworth and Pascal together is more than enough to make Crime 101 an easy sell, but it’s another signifier that studios are being blown out of the water by the seemingly limitless piles of cash being bandied around by streaming companies.