Jennifer Lopez has invested 20 million in the strange musical-documentary about her romance with Ben Affleck that raises doubts in the industry and celebrities

February has been marked in red on Jennifer Lopez's calendar for months.

The New York artist will launch one of her most personal, but at the same time strangest, projects in a few days.

A triad of album with video clip and documentary, with a clearly musical point, but also autobiographical and even dreamlike.

A strange audiovisual Frankenstein with which she releases new music, reviews her career and recapitulates her 20 years of love with Ben Affleck, with whom she was about to cross the altar in 2003 and with whom she finally married in the summer of 2022. A hybrid that no one, not even those who have collaborated with her on the project, seem to fully understand, but on which she has strongly opted.

So much so that she could finance it with $20 million out of her own pocket.

The singer and actress has revealed the figure and the difficulties of bringing the project to fruition in a long interview with Variety

,

which also occupies its cover with a spectacular photographic production.

What she has done is a kind of complete package of music, audiovisual and personal life.

In 2002, Lopez released her third studio album,

This is me... Then

,

a huge success that sold more than

six million copies worldwide.

A few years ago she played it for her twins, Emme and Max, almost 16 years old and the result of her relationship with Marc Anthony, and they loved it, she asked them for more music like that, personal and telling stories.

Hence, this 2024 the follow-up to it,

This is me

...

now

, will arrive with 13 songs that will be released on February 16, although two have already been revealed.

But the album will also have two audiovisual legs that are very different from the classic video clip and in which Lopez has put her effort and her fortune.

More information

This is how a star is born (and made): how Jennifer Lopez managed to succeed in music without being a singer

First there will be a kind of musical film or long video called

This Is Me... Now: A Love Story,

which she co-wrote, among others, with her husband and which Dave Meyers (regular of music videos for Usher, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay) has directed and Lopez herself) and in which everyone from the actress Sofía Vergara to the musician Post Malone appears.

It will be a kind of mega video of all the songs on the new album, but it will also have a script, a common thread.

And, second, days later she will release a documentary,

The Greatest Love Story Never Told,

which is inspired by the letters that Affleck has sent her over the years.

It will narrate the scenes of both the album and the musical film.

Both will be seen on Amazon Prime Video, which has purchased them already finished for an undisclosed amount of money.

It has been the love correspondence that, according to Lopez, inspired her for the three parts, when she spoke to her manager for years, Benny Medina, about these letters.

In a conversation about her painful failed relationship and her eventual reconciliation two decades later, he encouraged her to create music, an album, about her story.

The musical film in the form of a long video clip that accompanies it stars Lopez herself, although in some interviews and previous showings it has been known that it is a kind of version of herself, a mix between Lopez herself and a character created by her. and by Affleck who, in addition to co-writing the story, also appears in it, like many other famous people.

However, not everyone wanted to be present in this strange project.

For example, as

Variety

tells us , Khloé Kardashian has refused to appear in it, and Jane Fonda, a good friend of Lopez (they worked together on

The Groom's Mother

in 2005), was on the verge of saying no.

The 86-year-old performer, winner of two Oscars, spoke personally with Medina to inquire about the project, and later even with Lopez, in a conversation that is seen in that behind-the-scenes documentary and of which

Variety

has given a small preview.

“I want you to know that, I don't know why, I'm on your side and Ben's side, and I want this to work,” Fonda explains to Lopez, in a kind of feeling shared with thousands of other people at that moment, when they They reconciled.

“However, this is absurd.

It's like you're trying to prove something instead of living it.

You know, there are tons of photos of the two of us kissing and hugging.”

Lopez answers with a laugh: “We are simply living our lives.”

Lopez tries to take away that feeling of effort to prove her love that Fonda sees in the documentary and explains that in 2003 their relationship "fell apart under the weight of pressure" and that now she wants to show that rebirth, which has made her become a global star, a box-office actress, a Super Bowl star, a style icon and a devoted mother of two children, as well as the wife of another screen star.

But instead of telling his journey in a documentary (like the one he made with Netflix a couple of years ago, focused on his performance with Shakira in the Super Bowl) he has done it in a hybrid project from which several investors have come out and in the one she has put in many millions.

“Everyone thought I was crazy.

In fact, I also think she was crazy,” she laughs during that interview when explaining the project, which she kept very secret and from which she has demanded the strictest confidentiality.

When Lopez recorded her album, she began to develop the idea of ​​this musical film (neither she nor her agents want to call it a long video clip) and a documentary to accompany it.

A project that is difficult for many to understand due to its content, with a strange mix of elements that came out of his head and that several scriptwriters have helped to capture;

a process that is seen in the subsequent documentary,

The Greatest Love Story Never Told,

which will be released on February 27.

In the previews that have been seen of

This Is Me... Now: A Love Story

, the last two and a half minutes, there are hummingbirds that send messages, fires, motorcycle accidents, several different boyfriends, a kind of group therapy ("We think you're a sex addict," her friends intervene), slamming doors, dramas and choreography at weddings (yours, of course), basketball courts and factories.

Jennifer Lopez arriving at the Elie Saab show at Paris Haute Couture Week, January 24, 2024.Edward Berthelot (Getty Images)

Just his $20 million on the table helped put that personally-based hodgepodge into motion.

There were many who said no, including the producer she often works with, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who stated in the interview that she was worried, she didn't understand anything and, to this day, she still doesn't.

“People are afraid to put themselves there,” Lopez reflects in the documentary.

“I get it, although it took me a while.

I have fear also.

But I don't act like I have it: that's the secret of my whole fucking career.”

But for her, there was something to tell.

“It was time, Ben and I have rediscovered each other and now that we are married I have something new to offer.

“This is the definitive piece that is going to close a chapter and so I can move on to the next part of my life.”

A chapter so exhausting that she declared in

Entertainment Weekly

that she doesn't know if she will ever make more albums.

“It is the quintessential J. Lo project,” she said of herself.

“It may be my last album.

I feel like it's the end of one era for me and the beginning of another."

In the newsletter that the artist sends by email, she has provided details of the project and also explained her feelings about it.

“She hasn't been this nervous, excited, scared and excited to share something with you in years,” she said in mid-January.

“The story of the journey from

This Is Me... Then

to

This Is Me... Now

is the most personal thing I've ever done.”

Also the most expensive and risky, which can mean success, a change in the perception of her career and her personal image, or a complete fiasco.

We'll just have to wait a few days to find out.