Road House director Doug Liman isn’t quite finished with his public excoriation of Amazon MGM, which has been the target of his ire for some time now.
If you thought the rather public dust-up between Doug Liman and Amazon MGM Studios was a thing of the past, it may be time to think again. The dispute went public when Liman accused the studio of misleading him about the status of this year’s Road House, the fight-filled remake that starred Jake Gyllenhaal as a former MMA star turned professional bouncer.
The dispute in question was over the film’s theatrical release (or lack of it) which led to Liman taking the spat public, threatening to boycott the film’s premiere, accusing Amazon of using the film “to sell plumbing fixtures” and wearing a cowboy hat, supposedly in preparation for an Old West-style showdown with Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos.
Anyway, Liman didn’t get his way, the film came out on streaming and the world kept spinning. Only Liman isn’t done, it seems. The director has piped up again, complaining that the alleged confusion over film’s shift to a streaming release meant that he and Gyllenhaal weren’t properly compensated for all of the backend financial dividends that can be part and parcel of such a strategy.
Speaking to IndieWire, Liman said: “First of all, I have no issue with streaming, 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 theatre. So I’m a big advocate of TV series, of streaming movies, of theatrical movies, we should have it all.”
Read more: Road House | “I’ve very publicly lost here,” says Doug Liman of his “war with Amazon”
The problem, then. “My issue on 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 added. “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.”
Amazon has not, at this stage, offered a reply. It’s hard to know the truth behind this one and to what extent Liman may have been misled by the studio. His fellow Road House collaborator Jake Gyllenhaal eventually came out publicly on the side of the studio – but Gyllenhaal also has signed up for a (probably lucrative) first-look deal with Amazon so we’re not particularly surprised that he nailed his colours to that particular mast. There’s also the matter of a Road House sequel, which Amazon is keen go get going. We’re guessing Liman won’t be invited to direct.
Liman’s public disquietude likely won’t change a thing, but we have to admire his willingness to take on the behemoth company anyway. Hopefully, venting his truth will unclog any creative blockage he’s holding onto and allow him to write a script for Edge Of Tomorrow 2 that is so perfect in every way that Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt sign on the dotted immediately. Perhaps the antagonists in the film could even be a faceless corporation that sells plumbing fixtures? You heard it here first…
