Earlier this year, Kevin Smith announced he’d be developing the 1984 wacky sci-fi flick The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension into a TV series. He loosely mapped out the seasons, saying the events of the film would comprise Season 1 and Season 2 would delve into “the sequel we’ve all dreamed about, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.” Today, however, Smith has dropped out of the project because of a lawsuit filed by MGM against Earl Mac Rauch (the original screenwriter) and W.D. Richter (the original director).

As Smith explained in a lengthy Facebook Live video, he read an article on The Hollywood Reporter about the studio trying to lay claim to the rights so he could officially go through with the series.

This was surprising because this was the first that I’d heard about it — not that there was a Buckaroo Banzai TV show. Yes, we were all hoping to do that, but I had no idea they were gonna sue the creators of Buckaroo Banzai to do that. Now, whether that’s right or not is not for me to say. You’ve got two parties that maintain they own something and whatnot.

He recalled his original excitement over the project, saying he wanted to try and get Mac Rauch and Richter involved someone — even suggesting they work on the script. He continued:

My point is that I’m not going to court. I love the people at MGM. They’ve treated me insanely well all across this project with real credibility and stuff like that, like they thought I could do this show, even when I didn’t think I could. And the folks at Amazon have been lovely as well, but you gotta remember, there’s no production yet, no script has been turned in, I haven’t been paid a dime, no money has been really spent. So, it’s not like we’re going to upend a lot of things, like this legal thing came out of nowhere. I did not know about this. I called up my agent and was like, “What the fuck is this?"

He definitively claimed later in the video, “I’m no longer involved. I don’t wish anybody harm; I wish all parties well. I hope these dudes come to an agreement, and if they do and they still want me involved down the road, I’ll be here. But why would they?”

Watch his entire Facebook Live video below, and skip to a little after the 4:00 mark to hear about the Buckaroo Banzai development.