Jennifer Lopez invests $20 million in strange musical-documentary about her Ben Affleck love story

Jennifer Lopez has had February circled on her calendar for months. The New York artist will launch one of her most personal — and strangest — projects in a few days’ time. J.Lo is set to release a new album, music video and documentary that looks back at her career and her 20-year love story with actor Ben Affleck. The two were engaged in 2003, but called the wedding off. Two decades later, they married in the summer of 2022.

No one who worked with her on the three-part project seems to fully understand it, but that hasn’t dented Lopez’s confidence: she even invested $20 million of her own money into it. On Friday, J.Lo will release her new album This is Me... Now, and an accompanying video, and a week later, The Greatest Love Story Never Told — a documentary about her relationship with Affleck — will come out.

This is Me... Now is a sequel to her third studio album This is me... Then, which sold more than six million copies worldwide when it was released in 2002. The new album has 13 tracks, two of which have been already released.

In addition to the movie, she will release a long music video called This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, which she has co-written with her husband. The video — directed by Dave Meyers, who has made music videos for the likes of Usher, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Lopez herself — features everyone from actress Sofía Vergara to musician Post Malone. This Is Me... Now: A Love Story will be a kind of mega music video for all the songs on the album, but it will also have a script and a common thread.

On February 27, Lopez will release The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which is inspired by the letters Affleck sent her over the years. The documentary will look at the making of both the album and the accompany music video. Both The Greatest Love Story Never Told and This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, will be available on Amazon Prime Video, which purchased the works for an undisclosed amount of money.

According to Lopez, it was Affleck’s love letters that inspired her to talk to her longtime manager Benny Medina about that correspondence. While talking about their painful breakup and eventual reconciliation two decades later, Medina encouraged her to create an album about their love story. This Is Me... Now: A Love Story stars Lopez, but in previews of the musical film, she is seen as a mix of herself and a self-created character. The video also includes Affleck, as well as a long list of celebrities.

However, not everyone wanted to be a part of this strange project. According Variety, Khloé Kardashian refused to appear in it, and Jane Fonda — a good friend of Lopez (they starred together in the 2005 movie Monster-in-Law in 2005) — was about to say no. The 86-year-old performer and two-time Oscar winner spoke with Medina about the project, and also with Lopez. The conversation with Fonda is included in the behind-the-scenes documentary.

“I want you to know that I don’t entirely know why, but I feel invested in you and Ben, and I really want this to work,” Fonda says in the documentary, according to Variety. “However, this is absurd. Like, it feels too much like you’re trying to prove something instead of just living it. You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.” To which Lopez replies, laughing: “That’s just us living our life.”

Lopez tries to dismiss the idea that they have anything to prove, explaining that their relationship “crumbled under the weight of the pressure” in 2003. According to the singer, the project is about renewal — a principle that has turned her into a global celebrity, box office star, Super Bowl legend, style icon and a devoted mother of two children. But instead of telling this journey in a documentary (as she did with the Netflix documentary that focused on her Super Bowl performance with Shakira) she has done so in a three-part project that scared off several investors. After they pulled out, she had to invest millions from her own pocket.

“Everybody thought I was crazy. And by the way, I thought I was crazy,” she tells Variety in reference to the project, which she kept very secret, demanding the strictest confidentiality.

When Lopez recorded her album, she began to develop the idea for the musical film (neither she nor her agents want to call it a long music video) and the documentary. The project’s strange mix of elements has made it hard for many to understand. For example, in a short preview of This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, there are hummingbirds messengers, fires, motorcycle accidents, several different boyfriends, a kind of group therapy session, slamming doors, a wedding dance routine (Lopez’s of course), basketball courts and factories.

It was her $20 million that turned this hodgepodge vision into a reality. Many doubted the project, including Lopez’s longtime producer, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who only reluctantly accepted the job.

“People are scared to put themselves out there,” Lopez reflects in the documentary. “I get it. It took me a long time. I’m scared. But I don’t act like I’m scared — that’s the secret to my whole fucking career.”

But for Lopez, the story was worth telling. “Now I feel like because Ben and I have rediscovered each other — and now that we’re married — I have something to offer. This is the defining piece of work that’s going to close that chapter so I can move on to the next part of my life.”

Indeed, closing this chapter required so much effort, Lopez told Entertainment Weekly that she’s not sure that she will make any more albums. “It’s such the quintessential J.Lo project,” she said. “This might be my last album, ever. I feel like it’s the end of an era for me and the beginning of a new one.”

In the J. Lo newsletter, the artist provided more details about the project and explained her feelings about it. “I have not been this nervous, excited, scared and thrilled to share something with you in years!!” she wrote in the newsletter, which is emailed to her subscribers, 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.”

It’s also the most expensive and riskiest. The world will find out whether her gamble has been a success or a complete fiasco in just a few days.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition