By: Mayel Andres Tapia-Fregoso

On March 21, 2024, Amazon Studios released its latest blockbuster film “Road House,” a remake of the original 1989 action classic. Following its launch on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming platform, the studio revealed that as of April 1, 2024, the film reached 50 million viewers. Yet, despite the film’s apparent success, Amazon’s Road House production has been filled with controversy. On February 27, 2024, R. Lance Hill, the writer of the original Road House (1989) screenplay, filed a lawsuit against Amazon Studios and its subsidiary MGM, alleging copyright infringement. Hill alleges that Amazon ignored his ability to reclaim the rights for his 1986 screenplay, disregarding his rights under law.

The premise of Road House is centered on the story of an ex-UFC fighter, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who is approached by the owner of the Road House bar offering him a second chance at life. Located in the remote Florida Keys, Gyllenhaal leaves his brawling days behind to protect the bar against a criminal enterprise who seeks to develop the land under the Road House for its own ends. 

Under U.S. Copyright law, a writer must wait thirty-five years from the date of the execution of a copyright grant before terminating the grant. After thirty-five years have passed, the writer can terminate the copyright grant by serving notice to the grantee in writing at least two years in advance of the effective date of termination. The copyright grantee’s rights, including the right to create a derivative work, expire upon effective termination of the grant. A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more already existing works. Cinematic adaptations of screenplays are considered derivative works. However, an artist cannot terminate the copyright in a work is made for hire which is when the work is created by an employee as part of the employee’s regular duty or when the work is created as a result of an express written agreement between the creator and the party commissioning the work. The party commissioning the work is considered the author and copyright owner.

Hill wrote the original screenplay in 1986 for the film label United Artists (UA), owned by MGM. According to the lawsuit, Hill did not have an employment or contractual relationship with UA when he wrote the screenplay. Hill entered into a “literary purchase agreement” with UA through his personal company, Lady Amos Literary Works Ltd., who owned the rights to the copyright. Therefore, according to Hill, UA only owned the rights to the screenplay for a limited time.

In November 2021, thirty-five years after Hill completed the original Road House screenplay, he filed the necessary petition with the U.S. Copyright Office and notified Amazon of his intent to terminate the grant of the copyright in two years. According to the complaint, Amazon instituted a self-imposed deadline to complete the Road House remake before the copyright in the original Road House screenplay would revert back to Hill in November 2023. The studio began filming the remake in 2023 until the 118-day-long Screen Actors Guild strike took place, pausing production until November 8, 2023. In his complaint, Hill argues that Amazon took “extreme measures” to finish the film by November 2023 at considerable cost by resorting to using artificial intelligence (AI) to “replicate the voices” of the actors in the remake. However, Amazon still completed the movie in January 2024, two months after the copyright reverted to Hill.

An Amazon spokesperson claimed that the allegations in the complaint were “categorically false” including the allegations regarding Amazon’s use of AI to replicate actor’s voices in the film. However, a person close to the studio suggested that if Amazon exploited actor’s voices by using AI to finish filming the remake, it was during the early stages of production. Studio executives insisted that the filmmakers remove any traces of AI in the finished product. Ultimately, the issue in this case will turn on whether Hill wrote the screenplay while under contract with UA or if he worked on it independently when he sold the rights to UA.Hill’s lawsuit is the latest in a stream of lawsuits by screen writers reclaiming the rights to their screenplays created in the 1980s from major film studios. In 2021, Arthur Miller, the creator of the Friday the 13th (1980) screenplay, successfully reclaimed his copyright in the screenplay by defeating Manny Inc., in a lawsuit decided by the 9th Circuit. In that case the court ruled in favor of Miller because it found that the screenplay was not a work made for hire, allowing him to terminate the transfer of copyright. As more time passes, we will likely see more artists seek to reclaim the rights to their work, giving them freedom to reap the benefits of their work long after the work’s initial creation.