Road House is an upcoming American action film directed by Doug Liman, from a screenplay by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry. It is a reimagining of the 1989 film of the same name. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor, J. D. Pardo, Arturo Castro and Billy Magnussen. Joel Silver produces the film, as he did the original.
“Road House” will have its first showing on March 8, 2024, at South by Southwest as the opening film. You can watch it on Prime Video, released by Amazon MGM Studios, starting March 21, 2024.
The Oscar-nominated actor who came to movie lovers’ attention decades ago in “Donnie Darko” is taking on a cult classic with a remake of the Patrick Swayze-led 80’s flick, “Road House.” The update will serve as the opening night film at South by Southwest on March 8.
Dough explains what happened, why he feels betrayed, and why this is a cautionary tale for a theatrical film business still recovering from the pandemic and the rise of streamers.
When Amazon bought MGM, one of the few remaining studios making big commercial films for theatrical release (movies like Bond, Creed) they announced that they would put a billion dollars into theatrical motion pictures, releasing at least 12 a year. They touted it as “the largest commitment to cinemas by an internet company.” I can tell you what they then did to me and my film Road House, which is the opposite of what they promised when they took over MGM.
The facts: I signed up to make a theatrical motion picture for MGM. Amazon bought MGM. Amazon said make a great film and we will see what happens. I made a great film.
We made Road House a “smash hit” – Amazon’s words not mine, btw. Road House tested higher than my biggest box office hit, Mr. and Mrs Smith. It tested higher than Bourne Identity, which spawned four sequels. I’m told the press response has been Amazon’s best since they bought MGM. Road House has a strong tie-in to the UFC, which has a rabid and loyal fan base that has spawned over 1.5 billion social media impressions for the film, and marketing hasn’t even started yet. The action is ground-breaking. And Jake Gyllenhaal gives a career-defining performance in a role he was born to play. Audiences will want to see UFC mega-star Conor McGregor take his debut swing at Jake on the big screen. The reality is there’s nothing quite so fun as a good bar fight.
The filmmakers and stars of Road House who don’t share in the upside of a hit movie on a streaming platform. And they deprive Jake Gyllenhaal — who gives a career-best performance — the opportunity to be recognized come award season. But the impact goes far beyond this one movie. This could be industry shaping for decades to come.
“He acts all nice like he is Mr. Rogers, but then he’ll haul off,” says one of the characters about Jake Gyllenhaal’s Elwood Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter who ends up working as a bouncer at a roadhouse in Florida Keys in the official trailer of Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming action film Road House.
The fact that we still have movie theaters after the global pandemic didn’t happen by accident. It happened because brave filmmakers like Chris Nolan and Tom Cruise insisted their movies play in the theater, and they proved audiences are still there. They proved that despite everything, we still enjoy gathering and sharing in the communal experience of watching a film together. People love going to the movies, despite the convenience of streaming. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, data shows that movies do better on streaming if they have been released theatrically first.
I’m not opposed to streaming movies. I made one of Amazon’s first original movies for streaming, and during the pandemic sold a streaming movie to Warner Bros. I’m currently making Instigators for Apple. But I am opposed to Amazon gutting MGM and its theatrical business, as I would have been had Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post and then gutted its newsroom (he did the opposite).
The reality is there may not be a human villain in this story – it may simply be an Amazon computer algorithm. Amazon will sell more toasters if it has more subscribers; it will have more subscribers if it doesn’t have to compete with movie theaters. A computer could come up with that elegant solution as easily as it could solve global warming by killing all humans.
But a computer doesn’t know what it is like to share the experience of laughing and cheering and crying with a packed audience in a dark theater – and if Amazon has its way, future audiences won’t know either.