Conor McGregor’s ‘Road House’ remake facing AI lawsuit, March 21 release date in jeopardy
Road House, a remake of the 1989 action-thriller starring the late Patrick Swayze, is scheduled for a March 21 release on Amazon Prime Video. However, the film has found itself in a bit of hot water after a lawsuit filed against MGM Studios and its parent company, Amazon Studios, has left the movie’s anticipated streaming debut in jeopardy.
According to a report from Deadline, the copyright for Road House, previously owned by United Artists, is said to have reverted back to the original film’s screenwriter R. Lance Hill in November. The termination clause forced Amazon Studios to complete the project before a Nov. 10 deadline by any means necessary — including the alleged use of artificial intelligence.
“This case arises from Defendants’ blatant copyright infringement due to their willful failure to license the requisite motion picture and ancillary rights to Hill’s Screenplay underlying their derivative 2024 Remake as required by law,” attorney Marc Toberoff wrote in the 19-page complaint.
“Hill is further informed and believes and based thereon alleges that Defendants went so far as to take extreme measures to try to meet this deadline, at considerable additional cost, including by resorting to the use of AI during the 2023 strike of the Screen Actor’s Guild to replicate the voices of the 2024 Remake’s actors for purposes of Automatic Dialogue Replacement, all in knowing violation of the collective bargaining agreements of both SAG and the Director’s Guild of America to which Defendants were signatories.”
The remake, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and UFC megastar Conor McGregor in his feature film debut, has seen its fair share of controversy since going into production last year. Aside from being impacted by the lengthy SAG-AFTRA strike, longtime producer Joel Silver — who worked on the 1989 original — was unceremoniously booted from the production due to creative differences.
That was followed by the controversial decision to forego a theatrical release in favor of straight-to-streaming which led director Doug Liman to boycott the film altogether.
Amazon Studios issued a statement denying the allegations levied by Hill.
“The lawsuit filed by R. Lance Hill regarding ‘Road House’ today is completely without merit and numerous allegations are categorically false,” an Amazon MGM Studios spokesperson said in a statement. “The film does not use any AI in place of actors’ voices. We look forward to defending ourselves against these claims.”
