Stories of life imitating art aren’t altogether uncommon, but they rarely come as specific as the tall tale of Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallee’s Janis Joplin biopic. After the Joplin project cycled through a handful of directors—Lee Daniels, Catherine Hardwicke, and Fernando Meirelles were all attached to helm at one point or another—Vallee agreed to take it on as his next film after Wild, his Reese Witherspoon-led survival film that enters theaters in a few weeks. He landed Amy Adams for the starring role, a series of words that has always promised a nuanced and well-realized performance. But one big problem lay beyond Vallee’s control.

Sean Durkin, director of Martha Marcy May Marlene, also has plans to develop a Joplin picture, but he’s got something Vallee doesn’t: the rights.

A report from /Film indicates that Durkin’s biopic has the proper clearance to include some of the singer’s greatest hits, while Vallee’s has yet to obtain similar privileges. Situations like these crop up every now and then; in recent memory, Toby Jones and Anthony Hopkins starred in dueling Hitchcock movies.

The difference between garden-variety conflicts like that and this hubbub in particular is that the Vallee/Durkin showdown was predicted down to some shockingly minor details on 30 Rock. Jane Krakowski’s self-absorbed actress Jenna Maroney signed on to star in a Janis Joplin biopic unable to secure the rocker’s life rights, leaving her no choice but to call herself Jackie Jormp-Jomp and warble timeless tunes such as “Chunk of My Lung” at Woodstocks. With any luck, we’ll soon see Amy Adams belting Joplin’s classic line about a synonym just being another word for the word you want to use.