A director spends months — even years — performing their craft on a film in hopes of creating the highest quality picture they can. And although Doug Liman believes he did just that with the remake of the cult classic Road House, he won’t be attending its world premiere.
Road House is scheduled to play as the SXSW (South by Southwest) film festival’s opening movie in early March. However, Road House is not receiving the big screen treatment that Liman was expecting when he signed on to direct the action movie starring Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal and former two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor.
It’ll be available to stream on Prime Video when it releases on March 21. Amazon MGM Studios is charged with bringing the film to life, as well as the decision to send it straight to people’s devices instead of cinemas, which doesn’t sit well with Liman.
Liman shared his thoughts about Road House in a guest column on Deadline in a blog posted on January 24.
Essentially, Liman is boycotting the movie’s SXSW airing in Austin, Texas, to protest Amazon’s choice to leave it out of theaters. “Contrary to their public statements, Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas,’ Liman wrote. “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.”
He pointed to Amazon’s apparent strategy with the highly anticipated film. Instead of sending it off to theaters across the globe, it’ll be solely available on Prime Video which, of course, requires an Amazon subscription. Liman claimed in the guest post that Road House has received an obscene amount of traction on social media. And if that translates to movie viewership, Amazon will likely notch more subscriptions, and more potential clients purchasing goods off of its marketplace.
“When Road House opens the SXSW film festival, I won’t be attending,” Liman wrote. “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.”
Amazon acquired MGM in 2022. When Amazon did, the company said it’d invest over $1 billion into theatrical pictures, according to a report from Bloomberg. But, from Liman’s perspective, Amazon doesn’t intend to make good on the promise, which could be another domino in the potential downfall of theaters. “The impact goes far beyond this one movie,” he wrote. “This could be industry-shaping for decades to come.” As an impassioned Liman stated:
“If we don’t put tentpole movies in movie theaters, there won’t be movie theaters in the future. Movies like Road House, people actually want to see on the big screen, and it was made for the big screen. Without movie theaters, we won’t have the commercial box office hits that are the locomotives that allow studios to take gambles on original movies and new directors. Without movie theaters, we won’t have movie stars.”
Liman also wrote that the shift from theatrical to streaming releases would zero out box office revenue, which could lead to film industry layoffs, and ultimately the end of the cinema experience. So, although Liman is glowing about Road House, he’s taking the opportunity to bring awareness to the bigger picture.
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