Hollywood Showdown: Doug Liman and Amazon MGM Are Making Competing ROAD HOUSE Sequels
It looks like there’s about to be a barfight throwdown between Amazon MGM and director Doug Liman over their dueling Road House movie sequels.
Liman, who revived the franchise with a streamer hit remake that starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, quietly has acquired the sequel rights to the original Road House scripted by writer R. Lance Hill.
The filmmaker plans to make Road House: Dylan, the scribe’s sequel to the iconic 1989 film that starred the late Patrick Swayze as the Zen tough guy who comes to a crooked town and cleans it up, one bar brawl at a time.
Amazon MGM Studios has begun production on Road House 2, a completely different sequel, following up Liman’s reboot. Ilya Naishuler is taking over in the director’s chair after Liman washed his hands of it. Gyllenhaal reprises as cagefighter-turned-barfighter alongside Dave Bautista, Aldis Hodge and Leila George.
Like last year’s first film, the plan is to release the sequel on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming site. The Liman-directed original became the biggest movie debut ever with a record-breaking 50 million worldwide viewers in its first two weekends on Prime Video.
That made it the most-watched film debut ever on a worldwide basis, according to the streamer, though precise streaming numbers aren’t as easily tracked as theatrical film box office repeats.
But the issue was because Liman’s original deal included bumps for box office success, his compensation suffered because the crowd-pleasing film certainly would have had a strong opportunity to draw a crowd to theaters.
After the film deal went belly-up, Liman wrote a guest column for Deadline, baring his frustration over making a deal that called for a full theatrical release, and then unceremoniously being informed that Road House would be a straight-to-streaming title. This came after the film tested well enough to be a sleeper theatrical hit, which was the deal that Liman made.
How can there be dueling sequels to the same film? There is a federal lawsuit being waged over the franchise’s ownership, filed by attorney Marc Toberoff for Hill. The issue is this: They maintain that Hill wrote the 1986 original as a spec script, and that, under Section 203 of the U.S. Copyright Act, Hill lawfully recaptured rights to his screenplay on November 11, 2023 — 35 years after selling it to United Artists. Section 203 allows authors to reclaim copyrights to original works after that period, unless the work was created as a “work for hire.”
Hill maintains Road House was not a work for hire: He wrote it independently, was paid only after selling it at auction and had no studio supervision. He alleges that Amazon’s 2024 remake infringed those re-acquired rights. Amazon and MGM counter that his termination notice is invalid because the script was sold through his loan-out corporation, Lady Amos Inc., and therefore qualifies as a work for hire.
Their false-ownership counterclaim — accusing Hill of misrepresenting authorship in copyright filings — survived an anti-SLAPP motion to strike in September 2024; Hill has appealed that ruling to the Ninth Circuit.
Liman, who sought out Hill when he was planning to do the Road House sequel for Amazon MGM, got to know the writer and sympathized with his plight. Liman’s move effectively recognizes Hill’s claim and sets up two competing chains of title: Amazon’s studio sequel and Liman’s author-sanctioned project.
It sounds like these will be very different movies and stories, and fans of the franchise will likely enjoy both films. Stay tuned for updates on the projects.
via: Deadline