Well, Road House fans, it’s official – you’ve made the Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor action romp the biggest film Amazon has ever produced.
With over 50 million viewers over the first two weekends, it has beaten any other original movie produced for Prime Video.
The huge success of the film has been contentious – after Amazon made the decision to not release it in cinemas and screen the film exclusively on Amazon Prime.
This caused a huge controversy, with director Doug Liman originally stating he would be boycotting the film’s premiere in protest.
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Whilst he eventually came around and attended, fans are all saying the same thing – it sounds like Amazon missed out on a boatload of money.
Posting a reply to the news on X (formerly known as Twitter), one poster said: “Too bad they didn’t put it in theatres. They lost out on a lot of $.”
Whilst not a one-to-one comparison, writer/director Dominique Tolley Senior pointed out how much it could have made in cinemas.
They said: “50M viewers let’s say half of these had 2 people watching, that’s 75M people watching. At $10 a ticket, that would be $750M around about in the box office.”
$750 million would place Road House as the biggest film of 2024 so far, with Dune: Part Two leading the way with $627 million at the box office.
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Another replied to the news saying: “It was a good cool movie. Although I don’t see how it would’ve hurt to release this movie in theatres first before it hit streaming. Or perhaps both at the same time?
“Probably good word of mouth from the theatre experience would’ve increased streaming viewership even more is my guess.”
The film’s director Doug Liman was absolutely scathing of Amazon’s decision to debut Road House exclusively on Prime Video.
The Edge of Tomorrow and Road House director wrote a column for Deadline, where he said:
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“Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas. Amazon will exclusively stream Road House on Amazon’s Prime.
“Amazon asked me and the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Road House to sell plumbing fixtures.”
Liman claims that he originally agreed to make the film with MGM, who were subsequently bought by Amazon. According to him, MGM had agreed to it being a theatrical release, a decision which was reneged on by Amazon.
He went on to say: “The fact that we still have movie theatres after the global pandemic didn’t happen by accident. It happened because brave filmmakers like Chris Nolan and Tom Cruise insisted their movies play in the theatre, and they proved audiences are still there.
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“They proved that despite everything, we still enjoy gathering and sharing in the communal experience of watching a film together.”
Discussing his ultimate decision to back down and attend the premiere, the Road House director said: “You know, it’s tough to do but sometimes you just have to acknowledge that you lost.
“You took on Amazon, you fought for your movie... I literally did everything in my power to try to get this movie into theatres, and I lost!
Topics: Amazon Prime, Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor McGregor, TV and Film
Michael Slavin