My own work hijacked by my friends (and they don’t realize it)…

[kratos]

So I planned to make a short viral movie to sneakily advertise my music in it - and something completely unexpected happened. My friends who mainly star in it HIJACKED the project and claimed it as their own (including the music). Now I still haven’t released the short movie yet as I edited /composed and synced the whole shit – but my friends now have built up a large following (growing everyday) – and all of them are friends of my friends but not really friends with me…
The worse thing is that the large following have unreasonable expectations and have completely bought the fact that my friends made it. My friends don’t realize what they have done due to the unexpected success and hype of a certain “preview” I released a few weeks ago.

Now I can do 2 things:
Release the short movie and let my supposed friends take all the credit
OR
Not release it which means I lose my friends but don’t have to face the following as my friends claimed it was theirs anyway. This also means i have to try build up hype from scratch if i decide to release it in the future.

Either than that Im just confused now on what to do…I know you get double crossed in the industry all the time but I guess it turned out to be my friends who double crossed me.

P.S: Why didn’t I advertise myself? I was busy editing/syncing/composing music for the vid so handed the burden to them. In a way they did succeed. Now I know how the Trojans felt when they let the wooden horse in...:/

 

[Greg_L]

I like your friends. They're my kind of people.

 

[ido1957]

You're in the movie credits right? So they'll know who produced it?

 

[rayc]

Have your friends tell their friends that their friend, (you), did the work! That way you'll all be friends unless you're no longer friends with your friends and, by extension, their friends.

 

[kratos]

k i think i gt my answer thanks