It was only after meeting David O. Sacks, who had made his fortune as the former COO of the Internet payment company PayPal, that Reitman found a financier for his script. A first-time producer, Sacks spent over a year trying to acquire the rights to the film from Icon. He financed most of the film's $8.5 million budget and let Reitman keep most of his original draft. The project marked Reitman's first feature-length film as a director, though he previously directed short films and commercials and had worked on the set of his father, director Ivan Reitman.