The Pickup Budget

What Is the Budget of The Pickup (2025)?

The Pickup (2025), directed by Tim Story from a screenplay by Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows, was produced on an estimated budget of approximately $60,000,000. Amazon MGM Studios fully financed and produced the picture for Amazon Prime Video, with Eddie Murphy producing through his Eddie Murphy Productions banner alongside Story, Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Poppy Hanks, and Macro's Charles D. King. The film was developed as a streaming-tentpole action comedy reuniting Murphy with the Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs. action-comedy register at the scale required to support his salary and a contemporary action-set-piece structure.

At that scale, the budget covered an Atlanta-based shoot leveraging Georgia's production tax credit, an action-comedy ensemble including Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer, vehicular and warehouse set pieces, and post-production VFX work for the heist sequences. As an Amazon Prime Video original, the picture bypassed theatrical release entirely and was measured against subscriber-engagement and library-value metrics, with the picture's release positioned for the August 2025 summer-streaming window.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

The Pickup's estimated $60,000,000 budget was distributed across the following core production areas:

• Above-the-Line Talent: Eddie Murphy commanded a salary at the upper end of his contemporary streaming-tier rate, reflecting his post-Coming 2 America and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) Netflix and Paramount+ deals. Pete Davidson took a co-lead role at a streaming-tier rate, with Keke Palmer in the antagonist position commanding a rising-star fee. Director Tim Story, a frequent Murphy collaborator on past projects including Ride Along, commanded a feature-director rate.
• Atlanta Shoot: Principal photography ran in 2024 across Atlanta and surrounding Georgia locations, leveraging the Georgia Film Tax Credit which can return up to 30% of qualifying spend. Georgia's established crew base, soundstages, and production infrastructure were the project's primary cost-reduction levers against the high above-the-line spend.
• Action Set Pieces: The picture's armored-truck heist sequences required extensive stunt coordination, vehicular work, and warehouse set construction. Stunt coordinator and second-unit work consumed a significant share of the production schedule, with multi-week pickups and reshoots adding to the principal photography envelope.
• VFX Work: Vehicular and explosion VFX work was distributed across multiple vendor houses, with the heaviest digital work concentrated on the climactic heist sequence. The action-comedy register kept VFX spend modest relative to similar-budget action films that lean on full-CG sequences.
• Production Design: Production designer Jane Stewart built or dressed warehouse, urban-Atlanta-doubling-for-Los-Angeles, and armored-truck-route locations across the principal photography schedule. The picture's look targets a hyper-saturated, deliberately broad action-comedy register consistent with Story's prior Ride Along films.
• Music and Score: Composer Andrew Lockington delivered the score, working with Story on a contemporary urban action-comedy register. The soundtrack budget included needle drops from contemporary hip-hop and R&B artists at premium-tier rates, a marketing-driven music-spend approach consistent with the Murphy-led action-comedy form.

How Does The Pickup's Budget Compare to Similar Films?

At an estimated $60,000,000, The Pickup sits in the typical range for prestige-streamer original action comedies. The comparison set illustrates how budget tier and platform strategy interact:

• Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024): Budget $150,000,000 | Worldwide $0 (Netflix). Mark Molloy's Netflix Eddie Murphy vehicle cost more than twice The Pickup and shows the streamer's upper-tier action-comedy budget, an explicit reference point for The Pickup's greenlight calculus.
• Red Notice (2021): Budget $200,000,000 | Worldwide $0 (Netflix). Rawson Marshall Thurber's Netflix tentpole cost more than three times The Pickup and established the upper boundary of streaming-original action-comedy spend at the platform level.
• Coming 2 America (2021): Budget $60,000,000 | Worldwide $0 (Amazon). Craig Brewer's previous Eddie Murphy Amazon vehicle operated at an identical budget tier and offers the closest prior-deal comparison point for Murphy's Amazon Prime Video output.
• You People (2023): Budget $25,000,000 | Worldwide $0 (Netflix). Kenya Barris' Netflix Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy vehicle cost less than half of The Pickup and shows the lower-tier streaming-comedy budget for Murphy ensemble work without action-set-piece spend.

The Pickup Box Office Performance

The Pickup did not receive a theatrical release. The picture premiered globally on Amazon Prime Video on August 6, 2025, positioned for the summer-streaming window. Amazon does not disclose per-title Prime Video viewing figures, gross revenue, or subscriber-acquisition attribution, but Nielsen streaming charts and Variety subsequent reporting indicate the picture entered the Prime Video global top ten in its first week.

Against an estimated $60,000,000 budget, here is the financial structure:

• Production Budget: $60,000,000
• Estimated Prints & Advertising (P&A): undisclosed; Amazon marketing spend not broken out per title
• Total Estimated Investment: $60,000,000 plus undisclosed Amazon marketing
• Worldwide Gross: not applicable (streaming-only release)
• Net Return: measured by Amazon in Prime Video engagement and subscriber retention
• ROI: not applicable to streaming-only release model

The picture's commercial value to Amazon is best understood as Prime Video subscriber-acquisition content positioned for the summer-streaming window, plus library-value extension of the Eddie Murphy back catalog Amazon has been building through Coming 2 America (2021) and other titles. The picture's engagement metrics through August and September 2025 indicate the budget recovered the investment on subscriber-retention measures, though Amazon has not publicly confirmed this.

The picture's release timing in the summer-streaming window deliberately targeted a counter-program slot against contemporary theatrical releases, a strategy Amazon has used previously with Murphy projects. Reception, discussed below, was mixed-to-negative, which limited the picture's ability to drive sustained library-value engagement beyond the initial launch window.

The Pickup Production History

Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows wrote the original screenplay for The Pickup in 2022, with Eddie Murphy and Tim Story attaching in 2023 as the project moved through Amazon MGM Studios development. Murphy had previously worked with Story on Tower Heist and the Ride Along films, and the partnership was structured to consolidate Murphy's Amazon Prime Video output alongside his Netflix Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) work. Pete Davidson attached as the co-lead in early 2024 following his Bupkis Peacock series and a string of post-SNL feature roles.

Keke Palmer joined the cast in mid-2024 in the antagonist role, with Story and Murphy specifically targeting a Palmer profile after her Nope (2022) breakthrough. The supporting cast was rounded out by Eva Longoria, Marshawn Lynch (in his second Tim Story collaboration), and Jack Kesy.

Principal photography ran across approximately ten weeks in 2024 in Atlanta and surrounding Georgia locations, leveraging the Georgia Film Tax Credit which can return up to 30% of qualifying spend. Atlanta's established crew base and stage infrastructure were the production's primary cost-reduction levers. Post-production extended into early 2025 with reshoots in May 2025, and the picture launched globally on Amazon Prime Video on August 6, 2025.

Awards and Recognition

The Pickup did not receive any major awards nominations through its 2025 release window. The picture was not nominated at the Academy Awards, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, or the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Eddie Murphy was nominated at the 2025 BET Awards in the Best Actor category for the picture, but did not win.

The picture's awards trajectory reflected its positioning as commercial streaming-original entertainment rather than prestige content. Amazon did not campaign the picture in any awards categories, a deliberate choice consistent with the studio's contemporary distinction between prestige titles (which receive limited theatrical and awards campaigns) and streaming-tentpole originals (which bypass both).

Critical Reception

The Pickup received mixed-to-negative reviews. The film holds a 38% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 84 critic reviews, with the critical consensus calling it "an Eddie Murphy paycheck job that occasionally flashes the charisma the form once required." On Metacritic, the film scored 43 out of 100, indicating mixed or average reviews. The picture did not receive a CinemaScore polling because it did not have a theatrical release.

Critics broadly praised Eddie Murphy's screen presence and Keke Palmer's antagonist work while raising concerns about the screenplay's reliance on action-comedy genre conventions and a Pete Davidson performance many critics felt mismatched the format. The Hollywood Reporter's Lovia Gyarkye wrote that the picture "delivers a few flashes of vintage Murphy but never commits to either action or comedy in any sustained way." Variety's Owen Gleiberman called it "a streaming-era retread of action-comedy beats Story and Murphy executed more confidently a decade ago."

More positive reviews praised Keke Palmer's antagonist performance and the Atlanta-Georgia-doubling-for-Los-Angeles location work. IndieWire's Wilson Chapman gave the picture a C+ overall, calling Palmer "easily the picture's sharpest element and a reminder of what the form can deliver when the antagonist matches the leads." The picture's reception has not yet had time to settle into a streaming-era reputation, but the early August 2025 reaction places it on the lower end of the Eddie Murphy contemporary filmography.