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Road House director Doug Liman has voiced his frustrations over the streaming release of his action movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Liman’s film, which was a remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze-led thriller, was initially scheduled to debut in theaters, but plans changed when the film’s studio MGM was acquired by Amazon in 2022.
“First of all, I have no issue with streaming,” Liman stipulated in a new interview with IndieWire. “We need streaming movies cause, we need writers to go to work and directors to go to work and actors to go to work and not every movie should be in a movie theater. So I’m a big advocate of TV series, of streaming movies, of theatrical movies, we should have it all.”
The Edge of Tomorrow director said his issue with “Road House is that we made the movie for MGM to be in theaters; everyone was paid as if it was going to be in theaters.”
“Then Amazon switched it on us and nobody got compensated,” he claimed. “Forget about the effect on the industry – 50 million people saw Road House – I didn’t get a cent, Jake Gyllenhaal didn’t get a cent, [producer] Joel Silver didn’t get a cent. That’s wrong.”
The Independent has reached out to representatives at Prime Video for comment.
In April, Amazon reported that Road House attracted 50 million viewers globally over its initial two weekends on the platform. It became the “most-watched produced film debut ever on a worldwide basis,” the streamer said at the time.
Before the film’s March release, Liman had initially announced his plans to “silently protest Amazon’s decision to stream a movie so clearly made for the big screen” by boycotting the movie’s world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.
“The movie is fantastic, maybe my best, and I’m sure it will bring the house down and possibly have the audience dancing in their seats during the end credits. But I will not be there,” he wrote in an op-ed for Deadline.
Liman, Gyllenhaal and Silver were given the choice either to make the film for $60m for it to be released in theaters or to take $85m for it to be released solely on streaming, sources told Variety. The team chose the latter.
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“I adore Doug’s tenacity, and I think he is advocating for filmmakers, and film in the cinema, and theatrical releases. But, I mean, Amazon was always clear that it was streaming,” Gyllenhaal told Total Film at the time.
“I just want as many people to see it as possible. And I think we’re living in a world that’s changing in how we see and watch movies, and how they’re made. What’s clear to me, and what I loved so much, was [Liman’s] deep love for this movie, and his pride at how much he cares for it, how good he feels it is, and how much people should see it.”
Gyllenhaal leads Road House as ex-UFC fighter Dalton who takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse in an attempt to escape his dark past. He soon comes to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.
Road House is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
