Things continue to be troublesome for Jake Gyllenhaal’s next big movie. Amazon has a new lawsuit on its hands for copyright infringement and use of AI from the original writer of Road House, which will soon have its remake with the A-lister in March. R. Lance Hill has multiple claims, including the company and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, which Amazon owns, ignored him as he tried to reclaim the rights to the 1986 film.
According to the screenwriter, he filed a petition with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2021 for the rights to return to him. A deadline for the expiration was set for November 2023, so he needed to gain the rights by then. To sideline him, he alleged that the studio ignored him to continue production, and when the SAG strike happened, it allegedly used AI to replicate voices to fill in for needed ADR.
AI Use and Copyright Infringement Files in New Lawsuit Against Amazon for Road House Remake
The claim had been obtained by the Los Angeles Times for the film that keeps running into issues. Director Doug Liman previously wrote a scathing guest article on Deadline to announce he would boycott his own film for not getting a theatrical release. He alleged that after testing well, the studio decided to push it for a streaming-only movie. The leading star would go on to contradict those statements as “Amazon was always clear that it was streaming.”
The November 10 deadline would have led to the rights of the film going back to the writer. Another part of the lawsuit against Amazon for Road House was how the studio completed the film in January, two months after the copyright deadline.
Like any remake, liberties and similarities will be taken. The lawsuit raised a problem that the line started to be crossed as “key literary elements substantially similar.”
The screenwriter seeks to stop the distribution of the film. The suit comes within weeks of the film’s release on March 10.
