It's still better than the proper one we got.

Making a deliberately slapdash film for contractual loophole purposes is a far more noble pursuit than making focus-group level Hollywood turds for silly levels of profit.

The sad part is the director and actors didn't actually know.

Do we know what their reactions were when they found out? Probably make for good reading.

Well, the wikipedia answer was they were paid peanuts and were promised big bonuses on it making to the big screen (it didn't) or it getting used as a pilot-movie for a TV show (it wasn't), so I'm guessing they were kinda pissed off.

It's also embarrassing when he can get writers to make actual halfway-believable dialogue for a dysfunctional group and not just let a bunch of pretty idiots bounce endless one-liners and monologues off each other.