Road House director Doug Liman is not happy that the studio is refusing to give his film a theatrical release… and he’s making that point very, very clear.
Call us eternally optimistic, but we’ve got hopes that the upcoming Road House remake is going to be a fun time.
Jake Gyllenhaal is taking over the role played by the late, great Patrick Swayze and while he’ll undoubtedly bring a different energy to the role, there’s no doubting that Gyllenhaal comes up with the goods. It has the curiosity factor working in its favour too: the acting debut of UFC icon and headlines magnet Conor McGregor is another draw, as is the involvement of director Doug Liman, given that you never really know what you’re going to get when you sit down to watch one of his movies.
Except that this time, Amazon really does know what it’s getting, at least according to Liman.
The director has published a guest column on Deadline, claiming that the test scores for Road House are ‘through the roof’ and the press’ reaction to the film has been ‘the best since they [Amazon] bought MGM.’
Armed with these claims, Liman is angry that the studio is refusing to give the film a theatrical release, especially so (we’d imagine) because it has been clearly pursuing such a strategy with several of its other releases over the last year.
Here’s Liman’s take:
“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.”
Liman goes on to attack Amazon for its decision, openly accusing the studio of misleading him and all of us with its supposed support for the theatrical business:
“What else could I have delivered to the studio? Nothing, it turns out. Because contrary to their public statements, Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas. Amazon will exclusively stream Road House on Amazon’s Prime. Amazon asked me and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Road House to sell plumbing fixtures.”
Ouch.
Liman goes on to express sympathy for the human beings at Amazon who rubber stamped the decision not to give the film a theatrical release, instead blaming the tech company’s over-reliance on well, tech.
The snippets we’ve shown above are a part of a far longer diatribe that’s well worth a read. Liman is clearly not a happy man and has announced that he will be boycotting the film’s SXSW premiere ahead of its general release in March.
We’re not exactly sure how it all came to this, but we do know that the Road House remake was announced in 2022, the same year that Amazon bought MGM. Perhaps the proximity of those two events meant that the film’s release strategy wasn’t clearly defined, although our initial reporting of the film’s public announcement makes it clear it was intended for Prime Video.
Of course, in the years since then, Amazon has significantly altered its release strategy and given that he has the data to support his claims, Liman has every right to demand a theatrical release if other filmmakers have been given the same courtesy.
It doesn’t look like he’ll be getting his wish, though, and along with the news regarding Netflix’s scrapping of The Mothership, the completed Halle Berry film, this marks a pretty bad week for the image of streamers in the industry. Two high-profile fallouts like this might see other filmmakers thinking twice before they choose to shake hands with a streaming platform.
Road House releases on the 21st of March, not in cinemas – despite Doug Liman’s best efforts.
filmstories.co.uk
https://filmstories.co.uk/news/doug-liman-unleashes-stinging-rebuke-of-amazon-mgm/
