The screenwriter who penned the original screenplay for the 1989 cult classic film Road House, R. Lance Hill, is suing Amazon over its remake due out this March.
Hill, whose Hollywood pen name is David Lee Henry, has alleged that Amazon, MGM Studios, and United Artists (UA) failed to pay him licensing fees after the copyright to Road House was reverted back to Hill in November 2023. The studios, Hill claimed, have refused to recognize that Hill has recovered the copyright, instead moving forward with an allegedly “unauthorized remake.”
According to Hill, he transferred the copyright to UA in 1986 after writing the Road House screenplay “on spec”—which means “that he wrote it on his own volition, in the hope of finding an interested motion picture studio once the work was completed.”
But in the form granting UA the copyright, UA allegedly included “boilerplate” language in a “form recitation” that indicated that the screenplay was not considered a spec screenplay, but rather a “work made for hire” by an entity called Lady Amos Literary Works.
Under the Copyright Act, a work made for hire would ordinarily mean that the screenplay was either created by a Lady Amos employee or commissioned by Lady Amos, neither of which, Hill alleged, applied to the Road House screenplay.
Hill is the sole owner of Lady Amos, Hill argued, which “merely served as Hill’s alter ego for doing business” and has no employees. Lady Amos never paid Hill a salary or compensated Hill in any way for the screenplay, Hill said, nor did Lady Amos commission Hill to write the screenplay.
This hasn’t stopped studios from claiming today that Road House was a work made for hire, Hill’s complaint said.
“Road House has become a worldwide cult phenomenon since I wrote it as a spec script in 1986,” Hill told Ars. “But recently, when I recovered my copyright, MGM/Amazon tried to hand-wave me away” by allegedly claiming that MGM retains the copyright.
Studios’ “contention that United Artists’ form recitation in the 1986 grant retroactively converted Hill’s pre-existing spec screenplay into a work made for hire is contrary to law and, as such, United Artists’ post-facto boilerplate is of no legal force and effect,” Hill argued.
Hill is not attempting to stop Amazon from releasing the remake, telling Ars in a statement that he’s “elated that Doug Liman’s Road House remake is considered to be his and Jake Gyllenhaal’s best work to date.” The screenwriter expressed enthusiasm for the remake, which will credit him for writing the original story and screenplay.
Instead, Hill is seeking a permanent injunction to block studios from releasing the remake without respecting his exclusive rights to the screenplay and paying appropriate licensing fees for their derivative work. He’s hoping that a jury will declare that his copyright was properly recovered last November and rule that studios are guilty of copyright infringement, owing maximum statutory damages to Hill.
“Without a newly secured license, defendants’ exploitation of the 2024 remake in the United States constitutes ongoing willful infringement of Hill’s copyright,” Hill’s complaint said.
Hill’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, told Ars that Hill’s lawsuit seeks to defend all creators’ rights to their works when dealing with studios today.
“The asset base of all major entertainment studios is content; without it they have nothing,” Toberoff told Ars. “It is time they respect the fundamental rights and artistry of creators on whose sweat and toil their empires are based.”
Ars could not immediately reach Amazon MGM Studios for comment.
Hill: Studios used AI to rush remake release
“Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee, and he’ll drop like a stone.”
Patrick Swayze famously delivered this line as the star of the original Road House. Now Hill appears to be taking that advice by fighting one of the biggest tech companies in the world and attempting to cut off the remake’s distribution at its knees, if that’s what it takes to get Hill his licensing fees.
In November 2021, Hill filed to recover the copyright for Road House, his complaint said, then promptly served UA’s successors, Amazon and MGM, “with a statutory notice of termination of Hill’s 1986 copyright grant.”
Hill set the termination date of the UA grant as November 11, 2023, affording studios time to acknowledge the transfer and pay licensing fees to continue making a derivative work based on his screenplay.
Studios “had the ample and exclusive opportunity to re-license Hill’s screenplay over the two-year period between November 10, 2021 (when Hill’s notices of termination were served) and November 11, 2023 (when the terminations became effective),” Hill’s complaint said.
But the studios got the notice and allegedly “responded in total denial of the fact that they were required to secure a new copyright license from Hill.” They apparently “refused to acknowledge Hill’s statutory termination” and “steamrolled ahead with the production of” their 2024 remake.
According to Hill, studios appeared to realize that Hill’s claim as a rightsholder was valid and rushed to finish the movie before the November 11 termination date. Studios allegedly took “extreme measures” at “considerable additional cost,” including “resorting to the use of AI” during the Screen Actors Guild strike to “replicate the voices of the 2024 remake’s actors for purposes of ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement), all in knowing violation of the collective bargaining agreements of both SAG and the Director’s Guild of America.”
“These are not the actions of companies that truly believe that Hill’s termination is ineffective,” Hill’s complaint said.
Ultimately, studios failed to finish the movie before the termination date, triggering Hill’s lawsuit.
Hill wants a US district court in California to declare that the Road House screenplay was written on spec, not as a work made for hire, and thus studios must honor the termination date of UA’s 1986 grant and pay Hill licensing fees.
The screenwriter appears broadly disappointed in how Amazon has handled the remake, start to finish.
Clashing with Amazon, the remake’s director, Liman, plans to boycott the remake’s premiere at SXSW this March, Deadline reported. Hill told Ars that he questions Amazon’s intentions to support artists involved in its movies and supports Liman’s stance that the movie deserves a theatrical release.
“MGM/Amazon seems intent on burying Road House (2024) in a streaming slot rather than releasing it on the big screen where great movies and movie stars belong,” Hill told Ars. “They might as well erect a sign out front advising TALENT BEWARE, NOT WELCOME HERE.”
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