After promising a boycott weeks ago, director Doug Liman made a surprise appearance at South by Southwest on Friday to attend the red carpet premiere of his “Road House” remake.
The film’s star Jake Gyllenhaal introduced the screening at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, making a point of thanking Amazon executives including Jen Salke. “I want to thank a few people, because that’s what you do. I want to thank South by Southwest and we have our Amazon folks here who have been so fantastic,” he said, going on to thank other Amazon executives as well as “Road House” cast members.
“I also want to thank our incredible director, he’s in the audience tonight,” Gyllenhaal said, referring to Liman. “He’s been a friend for over 15 years, I’ve wanted to work with him for that time, we’re so lucky. He’s so brilliant and this movie is too.”
In January, Liman penned an open letter explaining his decision to skip the debut of his film, saying that distributor Amazon had “asked [him] and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas” and then broken that trust by deciding to stream the film on Amazon Prime Video instead of giving it a theatrical release.
Sources told PvNew in February that Amazon had given the filmmakers a choice between a $60 million budget for a theatrical release, or $85 million for streaming, and that the filmmakers had opted for the latter. (Liman declined to comment.) In an interview, Gyllenhaal said that “Amazon was always clear that it was streaming.”
In “Road House,” Gyllenhaal stars as an ex-UFC fighter who is now a bouncer at a roadhouse in the Florida Keys. His violent past emerges when a criminal gang threatens him, and the brawls and bloodshed escalate.
