Road House Director Doug Liman Declares War On Amazon's Sequel With His Own Sequel

In 1989's "Road House," the suave cooler named Dalton (played with aplomb by Patrick Swayze) told his staff that the most important rule in nightclub security was to "be nice ... until it's time to not be nice." Apparently, that time has arrived for Doug Liman, who directed the 2024 remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Dalton. That film was made for Amazon MGM Studios, and Liman metaphorically threw hands over the fact that the movie went straight to Prime Video against his express wishes. The director even wrote an op-ed for Deadline criticizing the streamer, to no avail. The film eventually did well enough for Prime Video to commission a sequel, with Gyllenhaal returning and Ilya Naishuller stepping into the director's chair.

Apparently, the bad blood between Liman and Amazon isn't finished, because in a bizarre turn of events, the filmmaker appears to be exploiting a nearly 40-year-old loophole that he believes allows him to make a parallel, competing sequel. According to Deadline, Liman has acquired the rights to make a sequel to his "Road House" that's separate from Naishuller's, based upon a federal lawsuit that's currently underway regarding the franchise's ownership. This lawsuit alleges that one of the 1989 film's original writers, R. Lance Hill (going by the pen name David Lee Henry), supposedly wrote that film in the mid-'80s on spec, and that Hill subsequently reclaimed the copyright in November of 2023. Thus, the 2024 remake (Liman's own film, mind you) would be considered an infringement of Hill's rights, even while Liman and Hill attempt to make their own independent sequel to that remake entitled "Road House: Dylan." Thanks to the lawsuit not yet being settled, we may either never see this movie or we may find ourselves dealing with multiple sanctioned sequels to the same remake.

This all seems incredibly confusing and messy, but that's apparently par for the course when it comes to "Road House." The 1989 original, directed by Rowdy Herrington, became infamous thanks to its dubious charms; a mixture of western, noir, and martial-arts films with a blues-rock "Urban Cowboy" flair. No one attempted to sequelize until 2006 with the direct-to-video sequel "Road House 2." That sequel killed Dalton off-screen, cast Jonnathon Schaech as Dalton's DEA Agent son, and basically disappeared from most people's minds the instant they saw it. Clearly, "Road House" was not a formulaic film that could easily be repeated.

That didn't stop Liman from making his remake, however, a venture which arrived at about the tail-end of MGM (now Amazon MGM Studios), cannibalizing its back catalogue for uneven remakes, a la "Robocop" 2014 and "Child's Play" 2019. The film changed Dalton from a mysterious, nomadic figure with a checkered past into a former UFC middleweight scammer, and the resulting movie ended up being a muddled and confused experience, something which /FIlm's Jacob Hall called "a first draft." While Naishuller's "Road House 2" sounds like it's far more on track, featuring a cool supporting cast of Dave Bautista, Aldis Hodge, and Leila George, Liman and Hill's "Dylan" seems like the franchise is up to its old messy missteps again. After all, who is this Dylan person, a Dalton replacement? Will Liman and Hill take a page out of 2006's "Road House 2" and reveal Dylan is Dalton's relative? Or does the subtitle promise something more convoluted, like a "Karate Kid Legends" style folding of the remake's continuity into the original movie's world? 

Whatever happens, it's all headache-inducing, which, quite frankly, isn't very nice.