‘Road House’ brawl: Amazon accused of using AI to replicate actors’ voices during SAG strike in order to beat copyright

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On Tuesday, R. Lance Hill, who wrote the screenplay for the 1989 cult movie, sued Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and its parent, Amazon Studios, claiming copyright infringement and seeking declaratory relief.

Hill, who goes by the pen name David Lee Henry, alleges the Seattle e-commerce giant ignored his ability, under the U.S. Copyright Act, to reclaim the rights for his 1986 screenplay, “Roadhouse,” which spawned the original movie and this year’s reboot, in which Gyllenhaal portrays an ex-UFC fighter who struggles to leave his brawling days behind.

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles, Hill alleges that he filed the necessary petition with the U.S. Copyright Office in late 2021, requesting that the copyright revert back to him when United Artists’ claim was due to expire in November 2023. United Artists released the original movie, which featured Patrick Swayze.

But Amazon, which owns the “Road House” rights through its acquisition of MGM’s film library, allegedly ignored his copyright claims and plowed ahead — even taking steps to work around the SAG-AFTRA strike — to attempt to finish the movie before the copyright expired, according to the suit.

Amazon “went so far as to take extreme measures to try to meet this November 10, 2023 deadline, at considerable additional cost, including by resorting to the use of AI (artificial intelligence)” during last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, Hill’s lawsuit claims. He alleges Amazon used AI to “replicate the voices” of the actors in the 2024 remake.

The movie was completed in January — about two months after the copyright deadline, the suit claims.