The stars were signed, the director was hired, the sets were ready. Last month everything seemed seemed ready for the start of production for Used Guys, a comedy from Twentieth Century Fox starring Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. But then the studio, and its financing partner Sony Pictures Entertainment, suddenly pulled the plug.

The stars and director, Jay Roach (of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents fame), were stunned. The film, a futuristic comedy about cloned men who are bought and sold like secondhand cars, with Hollywood’s reigning comedy superstars attached, had all the signs of being a box-office hit. But a budget that had crept to $112 million proved too much for the studios. It now raises the question: how much is Hollywood willing to pay to raise a laugh?

The studios’ caution about Used Guys reflects the current state of Tinseltown comedy. The rise of the “Frat Pack”, a group of comic actors who brainstorm, suggest writers and directors and produce and appear in one another’s projects, has positioned these stars in a powerful position within the film industry. Many of them are represented by key agents who collaborate on packaging movie ideas and pitching screenplays.

The pack’s core members, producing comedies that are less sophisticated than Woody Allen but less crude than American Pie, include Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Owen and Luke Wilson and Steve Carell. Hollywood loves them because, for a relatively low production cost, they are achieving huge returns. Wedding Crashers, last summer’s huge comedy hit starring Owen Wilson and Vaughn, cost $40 million and took $285 million worldwide.

As Judd Apatow, one of the directors in the frat pack, told the film industry paper Variety recently: “We like each other, we know how hard it is to make good comedies, and we respect anybody who is good at it.”

Hollywood’s comedy summer has already got under way with Vaughn opposite Jennifer Aniston in The Break-Up becoming a surprise hit. After King Kong, Jack Black has returned to comedy as a would-be masked Mexican wrestler in Nacho Libre. Budgeted at $35 million, it’s already made $68 million in the States after three weeks in release.

But such success means that the stars’ asking prices have gone up. Will Ferrell, the star of Old School and Anchorman, earned $20 million for his latest role as a racing driver in Talladega Nights, an asking price also enjoyed by Vaughn and Stiller. What’s more, the stars’ percentage of box- office revenues is eating into the studios’ ability to recoup their initial production costs.

Comic talent also demands a degree of control. When Adam Sandler signed up for I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, he brought in his own team to join the roster of producers. When Jim Carrey grew unhappy with Fun with Dick and Jane, he tried to fix the film’s final scenes with subsequent reshoots and re-editing driving up the budget.

“If you play with them, you do it knowing you are in their sandbox,” one studio executive told Variety. “If you don’t like it, you don’t play. But if you can keep the budget reasonable, the domestic box-office track record is strong.”

That’s why every studio is now looking for the next Steve Carell. He was a relative unknown when he starred in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The $26 million comedy went on to make $177 million worldwide with another $100 million in DVD sales.

Where once the comedy route to big-screen comedy success was via TV’s Saturday Night Live, which led to such movies as The Blues Brothers and Caddyshack, it’s now as likely to be via the comedy clubs, the internet and the stage. The stand-up comedian Dane Cook, the online satirist Andy Samberg and Dan Fogler, noticed in the Broadway musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, are all currently making films.

Meanwhile, Roach is trying to set up Used Guys elsewhere. “Why comedies can't have as big a budget as action films is a long story, but evidently they can’t. This is an expensive film by any standards, and I was reminded of that all along,” he told The New York Times.

The biggest test for the frat pack’s drawing power may well come next year when the $140 million special effects-heavy Evan Almighty is released. A sequel to the Jim Carrey hit Bruce Almighty, it stars Carell as a man whom God instructs to build an ark and stock it with animals. Will it be manna from box-office heaven or the last laugh for the frat pack?

Nacho Libre is released on August 11

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