Road House | Director Doug Liman is said to be making a rival sequel movie

While Amazon MGM makes Road House 2, Doug Liman – director of the 2024 remake is said to be making Road House: Dylan… Here’s an unexpected bit of news. While Amazon MGM has a sequel to its 2024 Road House remake on the way, again starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the director of that movie – Doug ... Road House | Director Doug Liman is said to be making a rival sequel movie

While Amazon MGM makes Road House 2, Doug Liman – director of the 2024 remake is said to be making Road House: Dylan…

Here’s an unexpected bit of news. While Amazon MGM has a sequel to its 2024 Road House remake on the way, again starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the director of that movie – Doug Liman – is said to be planning too make his own follow-up film.

This appears to be a continuation of the bitter and feud between Liman and Amazon, which spilled out into the public arena at the start of 2024. You may recall that Liman was angry that Amazon planned to put the action thriller Road House straight onto its Prime streaming service; he insisted he’d shot the film for a cinema release, while Amazon maintained that the remake’s straight-to-digital trajectory was all part of the contract both parties signed months earlier.

In the build up to Road House’s 2024 release, Liman wrote a guest post on Deadline, in which he famously said his film was being used by Amazon to sell “plumbing fixtures.” He then appeared in an unusual YouTube video in which he wore a cowboy hat and flew a tiny personal plane to the film’s SXSW festival premiere in Texas – Road House’s only cinema screening, and one Liman had previously said he’d boycott.

Theoretically, that could have signalled the end of the whole sorry affair. Road House was said to be a hit, according to Amazon’s own numbers, and it ordered a sequel. Bridges having been burned, it’ll be directed by Ilya Naishuller. Since then, Liman has directed the comedy caper The Instigators for Apple, and it’s reported that he’s planning to make a thriller called The Initiative for Universal, starring Angelina Jolie.

According to Deadline, however, the fallout between filmmaker and streamer appears to have taken another turn. The outlet writes that Liman has purchased the sequel rights to the original 1989 Road House, written by David Lee Henry (the pen name of R Lance Hill).

So while Amazon’s making a continuation of Elwood Dalton’s story – the UFC fighter turned bouncer played by Jake Gyllenhaal – Liman could be making a continuation of James Dalton’s adventures – the club doorman played by the late Patrick Swayze in 1989.

We aren’t experts in legal things, so it’s hard to say whether Liman will get away with making his rival movie. There have been plenty of instances where films with the same premises have appeared in cinemas close together: Deep Impact and Armageddon, A Bug’s Life and Antz, The Descent and The Cave to name a few.

Then there’s the Amityville situation, where a legal loophole means there’s nothing to stop independent filmmakers from making a horror film with the town’s name in the title. So while we have studio films like The Amityville Horror, there’s also such things as Amityville Cult, Amityville Vampire, Amityville Karen, Amityville In Space and Amityville Vibrator. And no, we haven’t made any of those up.

Amazon is, however, one of the biggest corporations on the planet, with an entire dungeon full of lawyers at its disposal. It remains to be seen whether it’ll leave Liman to make a film with the Road House name attached to it or try to have it shut down.

We’ll bring you more on this odd story as we hear it.