Doug Liman to wage war with Amazon MGM Studios over clashing Road House projects

The director of the recent remake will be working on his own project while a direct Jake Gyllenhaal sequel is still on its way.

When the Road House remake premiered recently, it didn't take long for it to become a huge hit with fans around the world, so much so that Amazon MGM Studios quickly greenlit a sequel. However that film will not feature the same talent behind-the-scenes, as director Doug Liman left the project and opened the way for Ilya Naishuler to take over.

The reason why this situation presented itself seemed to be down to Amazon changing the plans for the film and stripping it of its theatrical release to instead favour a direct debut on Prime Video. It proved to be a huge hit on the streamer, but that came at the cost of Liman's compensation, as his deal with Amazon MGM Studios supposedly included incentives based on box office performance.

Things went sour between the director and the production giant, and now Liman is set to wage war by making his own Road House project based on the sequel penned by original writer R. Lance Hill from the 90s, as per Deadline. There's a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo in play here to do with copyright law, but effectively the argument is that Hill still has rights to the Road House scripts, meaning Amazon can actively be working on its studio sequel due to recent rights purchases, while Liman and Hill can be working on their own independent sequel that's regarded as an "author-sanctioned project".

So in the near future we can expect a couple of Road House efforts to make their arrival, although how this will work narratively is unclear as Amazon's effort uses Gyllenhaal as the retired UFC star protagonist, whereas Liman/Hill's will need to find someone else as the late Patrick Swayze is of course not an option again.