There seems to be trouble at Amazon Studios with a handful of projects, but one of them is apparently so good that its star and director have been pushing incredibly hard to secure a theatrical release.

It all starts with Variety’s reports that legendary Hollywood producer Joel Silver (The Matrix, Sherlock Holmes) was pushed away from at least two projects - “one starring Mark Wahlberg, the other Jake Gyllenhaal” - for being verbally abusive to other executives. Meanwhile, “sources close to Silver” point to Amazon retaliating against him because he pushed back against the use of AI during the recent strikes. The truth, as usual, is hard to discern, and we’ll probably never know what exactly went down, but an upside seems to be that the Gyllenhaal-led movie is testing pretty well.

One of Variety’s insiders claims the remake of Road House is “one of the highest-testing films for [director Doug] Liman.” This would be a huge win for the director after the catastrophic flop of Chaos Walking (2021). World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy backs up the claims, saying that a person who attended one test screening described the movie as “highly entertaining” and a crowd-pleaser. Rumors have been swirling for a few months now that Silver was happy with the movie and furious with Amazon over their release strategy for it, which doesn’t include a theatrical run.

Well, according to Puck’s Matt Belloni, Silver, Liman, and Gyllenhaal reps pushed so hard to secure a theatrical release that they even screened the movie for Amazon founder and exec. chairman Jeff Bezos… on his yacht: “They convinced Jeff Bezos to screen the film on his yacht, with the hope that Bezos would love it and push for theaters. [Jen] Salke knew it was happening, and it didn’t change her mind, but an A+ effort.” Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke still refuses to give Road House a theatrical release though.

The movie sees Gyllenhaal “playing a former UFC fighter who ends up working security in a shady Florida bar” and was supposed to drop this fall, but it was moved to an early 2024 release on Prime Video despite all the good buzz.

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