Prime Video's big action movie remake breaks cover - but some aren't happy
The trailer's out, but is this one action movie smash fans should boycott?
Prime Video is getting a remake of 1989’s Road House, and you can check out the film’s trailer right now.
Jake Gyllenhaal takes over from Patrick Swayze as Dalton, the tough guy fighter brought in to clean up a dirty, violent bar.
It looks fun, and from a look at the trailer we’re digging the clarity of the fight choreography. There’s an awful lot of Connor McGregor in this trailer too.
Could this be the moment the MMA star becomes an action movie star? It’s a bit too early to tell if the ultraviolence imp's performance will be a dud or not.
However, someone much closer to the Road House remake than you’d guess is not happy about how this one is panning out — its director Doug Liman.
Liman has penned an article over at Deadline, protesting that Road House is not going to be given a cinematic release.
Road rage
“When Road House opens the SXSW film festival, I won’t be attending,” Liman writes.
“Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas. Amazon will exclusively stream Road House on Amazon’s Prime. 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.”
Liman doesn’t hold back, and the whole article is worth reading over at Deadline.
“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,” is another tasty excerpt from the piece.
We’re less fussed about mediocre Prime movies like Role Play and Candy Cane Lane missing out on a cinematic release, but Road House does sound like a real cinematic spectacle with proper box office potential.
Our lingering thought is whether Road House is going to pan out as well as Liman claims. If it does, he certainly has a point.
“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,” says Liman. And this guy made the brilliant Edge of Tomorrow and The Bourne Identity.
Road House is out on Prime Video on March 21.
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