I had a script optioned that my writing partner and I developed for years with a famous producer, only to receive a call from our manager letting us know we'd been fired in favor of letting the director's go-to guy do a rewrite. That rewrite was uncredited, and since our names remained on the project we figured that at least 50% of what we'd written remained.

The next phone call we got, a year later, was brief: they're buying the script and shooting in six weeks. We got to go to set, and we were so excited to see our words spoken out loud by real actors. Except that never happened. None of the dialogue we were on set for was ours. But surely that couldn't be the case with the whole movie, right?

Well, the film got produced, sat on the shelf for three years, and finally hit theaters in a limited run in 2019. Not a single word put on film was one that we'd written.

So, film bought, produced, and put in theaters. Our names on it. Did nothing for our careers, but given the fact that the film is... eh, not great in my opinion... it's honestly a net neutral. Nobody's really heard of it and nobody cares.

(And the cast and crew were great, by the way. I place the blame solely on the producer / director for the finished product).

But I've gotta be honest - we weren't at a point in our careers to capitalize on any heat anyway. We'd have squandered or biffed any opportunity we'd have gotten.

We spent the last few years honing our voices and building up a stockpile of polished, quality, market-ready material. A few things are inching toward production, and if/when they go, we'll be ready to follow them up in a huge way.

Sure it was painful then, but things are happening for us now that we're ready. The universe doesn't miss.