Nothing is certain in the movie biz, and the second that anybody thinks otherwise is the second that certain doom begins its approach. Say you’re trying to get an indie passion project off the ground. You’ve worked off the hangover from the long nights of script rewrites, secured shooting locations, wrangled a crew, and even landed a major A-list star for your leading role! Principal photography’s set to begin tomorrow. On the night before you commence shooting, you kick your feet up and sit back. It’s finally happening, you think to yourself. I did it. It is at this moment that things start to fall apart.

At least, this is the sad story of John Pogue. Let’s go back, way back, to like a month ago. With a couple of features under his belt, Pogue was prepared to dig into Wake, an action-thriller with Bruce Willis in the lead. All systems were go, with a suitably silly plot—Willis plays a sociopath and family black sheep who must defend his family that once cast him off when their island stronghold (?!) comes “under siege”(!?!?!?!)—in place and a leading man with starpower at the ready. Pogue kicked off shooting on Feb. 16 in Cleveland, a date sharp-eyed readers will recognize as 11 days ago. It turns out that the magic number of days required to squander an entire budget and effectively torpedo a film production is, at most, 10.

Deadline reports that all operations on Wake have ceased due to financial troubles. That item cites an unnamed source who claims that the general FUBAR-ness of the production has been a problem for some time now, though an official statement alleges that Wake will get back up in two to three weeks. Occurrences such as this aren’t entirely uncommon, especially in the independent world. But nobody wastes Bruce Willis’ time with 10 days of waiting around in Cleveland during the last gasp of winter. Nobody.