The Movie Know-It-All: How did Evan Almighty end up with such an insane budget?

When you think of movies with high budgets, you think of action movies, or big movie epics like Troy and Kingdom of Heaven. What you don't think of, is a comedy. Still, the budget for Evan Almighty is at least $ 175 million, with insiders claiming the budget to be higher than $ 200 million dollars, leading to many reports about how this is the most expensive comedy ever, and how it is never going to make it's budget back.