David Ayer says he has “nothing to show” for writing 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, the film that kicked off the long-running franchise.

In a recent episode of Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast, the writer-producer-director opened up about the film, which was released more than two decades ago and initially adapted from a 1998 Vibe magazine article.

“Biggest franchise in Hollywood, and I don’t have any of it,” Ayer explained. “I got nothing to show for it, nothing, because of the way the business works.”

While Gary Scott Thompson and Erik Bergquist wrote drafts of the script, Ayer said he was the one who came in and added diversity and street racing culture to the screenplay.

“When I got that script, that shit was set in New York, it was all Italian kids, right?” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Bro, I’m not gonna take it unless I can set it in L.