The remake of the classic 1989 film “Road House” has sparked a heated legal battle involving its original writer and some major film studios. The original script for “Road House,” written by R. Lance Hill under the name David Lee Henry in 1986, is at the center of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Amazon Studios, MGM Studios, and United Artists.
In February, Hill accused these studios of using his script without permission for their new version of “Road House,” which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor. However, the studios have hit back, claiming that the script was a “work made for hire,” meaning the rights to the script were owned by the company that commissioned it, not by Hill himself. This defense was presented in a counterclaim by the studios in federal court on May 3.
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'Road House' Copyright Dispute Sparks Countersuit From Amazon Studios, MGM https://t.co/Hmp6GlEg0R
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 7, 2024
The new “Road House” film, directed by Doug Liman and released on March 21, has been a huge success. It attracted over 50 million viewers on Amazon’s Prime Video in just the first two weekends after its release. This success is one of the reasons the studios are determined to fight Hill’s claims.
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This dispute has caught the attention of the public, particularly because of the high profile nature of the new film’s cast and its success on streaming platforms. The legal outcome will likely be closely watched as it may set precedents for how copyright laws are interpreted in the era of film remakes and reboots.
“In 1986, Hill personally acknowledged, represented, warranted — and indeed, contractually guaranteed — that the 1986 screenplay entitled Roadhouse was created as a work made for hire for his own company, Lady Amos Literary Works, Ltd. , and that Lady Amos — not Hill — was therefore its author within the meaning of the U.S. Copyright Act,” the Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLC-represented defendants/plaintiffs said in their version of events. “For that same reason, Lady Amos, not Hill, was the grantor of the rights that UA purchased in 1986.”
“Hill cannot rewrite this history now, nearly four decades after the fact. His attempt to terminate that grant is invalid and his copyright infringement claim is doomed to fail.”
