Movies

Road House director Doug Liman explains why he's boycotting the SXSW premiere of his own movie

The filmmaker is protesting the film’s streaming release: “This could be industry shaping for decades to come.”

Published on January 24, 2024 07:31PM EST

Doug Liman’s Road House remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal is set to premiere at SXSW in March — but the filmmaker won’t be in attendance.

Why? The director, whose other works include The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow, is protesting the film’s distributor, Amazon, which is opting to forgo a theatrical release and exclusively showcase the film on Prime Video. Liman explained his rationale in a Deadline piece. “Amazon is hurting way more than just me and my film,” he said. “If I don’t speak up about Amazon, who will?”

Liman called out the contradictions between Amazon’s statements and its actions, noting that when the company bought MGM — the studio that initially greenlit Liman’s project — it insisted that it was committed to releasing movies in cinemas, not just on streaming. “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.”

Reps for Amazon did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.

Road House' director Doug Liman explains why he's boycotting the SXSW premiere of his own movie — Doug Liman, Jake Gyllenhaal.
getty; imdb

Liman believes that Road House, which is a remake of the 1989 action classic starring Patrick Swayze, may be among his best work, and clearly outlined why it has the potential to make bank at the box office. “Road House tested higher than my biggest box office hit, Mr. and Mrs Smith. It tested higher than Bourne Identity, which spawned four sequels,” he said. “I’m told the press response has been Amazon’s best since they bought MGM. Road House has a strong tie-in to the UFC, which has a rabid and loyal fan base that has spawned over 1.5 billion social media impressions for the film, and marketing hasn’t even started yet.”

The director pointed out that the cast and crew of the movie won’t share in the back-end profits of the film since it won’t make money without a theatrical release, and that Gyllenhaal won’t be eligible during award season due to rules about streaming releases (Liman says it’s a “career-defining performance in a role he was born to play”). “But the impact goes far beyond this one movie,” he said. “This could be industry shaping for decades to come.”

“If we don’t put tentpole movies in movie theaters, there won’t be movie theaters in the future,” Liman continued. “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.”

He went on to note that movies like Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Top Gun: Maverick starring Tom Cruise demonstrated that audiences are still enthusiastic about seeing movies on the big screen. “They proved that despite everything, we still enjoy gathering and sharing in the communal experience of watching a film together,” he wrote. “People love going to the movies, despite the convenience of streaming. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, data shows that movies do better on streaming if they have been released theatrically first.”

Liman concluded his statement with a chilling idea. “The reality is there may not be a human villain in this story – it may simply be an Amazon computer algorithm,” he wrote. “Amazon will sell more toasters if it has more subscribers; it will have more subscribers if it doesn’t have to compete with movie theaters. A computer could come up with that elegant solution as easily as it could solve global warming by killing all humans. But a computer doesn’t know what it is like to share the experience of laughing and cheering and crying with a packed audience in a dark theater – and if Amazon has its way, future audiences won’t know either.”

Road House is set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on March 21.

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