Amazon refuses to pay screenwriter for the right to reboot Road House
Enlarge (credit: Amazon Studios)
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."