Prime Video
Road House star Jake Gyllenhaal and director Doug Liman were seemingly angry with Prime Video *before* the release of the film in March, and based on recent comments made by Liman, it appears that the situation hasn’t changed.
Prior to the release of the film, Liman was angry with Prime Video because they opted against releasing the film in movie theaters. He and Jake Gyllenhaal even went as far as reportedly going over the head of Prime Video’s studio head to screen the film for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on a yacht in order to land a theatrical window.
Liman was so frustrated, in fact, that The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow director even went as far as not attending the film’s world premiere at the South by Southwest festival.
“When Road House opens the SXSW film festival, I won’t be attending. 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,” Liman said at the time.
“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.”
In a recent interview, however, while Liman’s frustrations remain, his reasoning has seemingly changed, as he’s now pinning his anger on the lack of money he and his team have received.
“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 theater. So I’m a big advocate of TV series, of streaming movies, of theatrical movies, we should have it all,” Liman prefaced his statement.
“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,” Liman said in an interview with IndieWire while promoting his new film The Instigators. “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.”
As always, however, there are further layers to the story, as Variety has reported that sources told them Liman, Gyllenhaal and producer Joel Silver were given two options — make Road House for $60M and get a theatrical rollout or get $85 million and send it straight to Prime Video — and reportedly chose the latter.
Gyllenhaal’s grievances are clearly much less intense than Liman’s, however, as the star leading man has signed on to appear in a sequel.
Released on Prime Video on March 21, Road House starred Gyllenhaal as Elwood Dalton alongside Daniela Melchior, Conor McGregor, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Joaquim de Almeida, JD Pardo, and Austin Post (Post Malone).
