Budget in film refers to money spent not a budget in traditional sense. I mean, it is used both ways but when it is all said and done the final budget of the movie was the money spent on production. Otherwise we would see every crappy movie ever made with a "budget" of $500M scrapped for tax purposes. And these budgets typically do not include advertising and promotion.
I cannot think of a high profile/high budget movie that has been pulled like this. Jerry Lewis' clown movie, cannot remember the title though. Brave from Depp but it was released in Europe just not North America. An old Pryor film and most recently Louis CK had a movie pulled just after his allegations became public. But I would really call these high profile especially at the time of supposed release.
To me, this screams brand damaging bad and they just cut their loses before any more expenses were incurred. Or maybe the new boss is just looney and needs to flex a little. Very odd no matter how you look at it.
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