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Do you remember the Battle Of The Bonds, the infamous rights dispute that led to Roger Moore starring in Eon's Octopussy while Sean Connery rocked up as 007 one last time in the non-Eon, non-canon Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again? Admittedly, it was in 1983, so possibly not. But brace yourselves: The War Of The Road Houses is afoot. Per Deadline's reporting, while Ilya Naishuller is hard at work on a sequel to Doug Liman's 2024 Road House at Amazon, Liman has quietly snapped up the rights to R. Lance Hill's script for Road House: Dylan, a direct sequel to Rowdy Herrington's original 1989 action joint.
As you may recall, despite Liman's Road House becoming Amazon's biggest Prime Video debut ever with an eye-watering 50 million global viewers reported within its first two weekends of release, the Edge Of Tomorrow director was very vocal about his disdain for Amazon having reneged on its promise of a theatrical run for the movie. The filmmaker even penned an op-ed for Deadline explaining his planned boycott of the movie's SXSW premiere, making the not unreasonable point that "if we don’t put tentpole movies in movie theaters, there won’t be movie theaters in the future." And so now, while Nobody director Ilya Naishuller works with Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Bautista, Aldis Hodge, and Leila George on his Road House 2, continuing the story of MMA fighter-turned-bouncer Elwood Dalton, Liman has simply cut out the reboot-shaped middle-man and — having found a kindred studio-burned spirit in R. Lance Hill — bought the rights to Road House: Dylan from OG Road House scribe Hill.
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Now, whether or not we'll actually get to see two _Road House 2_s going head-to-head is very much up in the air at this point, as there's currently an ongoing federal dispute over the franchise's ownership and whether Hill's script is actually his to sell. But as Deadline state, from Liman's point of view at least, the plan is to make Road House: Dylan regardless of how things shake out in court. So Road House fans, watch this space — and, as the rules of the road house remind us, expect the unexpected.