Amazon’s Road House reboot accused of copyright infringement and AI voice cloning

The screenwriter of the 1989 action film. road house is suing MGM Studios and its owner Amazon Studios, accusing them of copyright infringement over the upcoming road house redo, report he Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles, also alleges that Amazon Studios used generative AI to clone actors’ voices in order to finish the film. road house remake during last year’s Hollywood strikes, which largely paralyzed film production.

In the complaint, screenwriter R. Lance Hill allegedly claims that he filed a petition with the U.S. Copyright Office in November 2021 to claim rights to the script (which both the original road house and on which the Amazon Studios reboot is based). At that time, Amazon would have owned the rights to road house due to the technology giant’s acquisition of the MGM film library, but the technology giant’s claim on the work expired in November 2023.

But according to THR, Hill’s original deal with United Artists (which secured the rights to the 1986 script before it was later acquired by MGM Studios) is defined as a “work made for hire.” The term, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, means that the party who hired an individual to create a work is both the owner and copyright holder of that work.

Hill alleges that the work-for-hire clause was merely boilerplate, and that Amazon ignored his copyright claims and rushed production of the new version, even taking “extreme measures,” such as using generative AI. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the release of the film, which is scheduled to premiere on SXSW opening night on March 8 and will stream on Prime Video on March 21.

Amazon MGM Studios categorically denied using AI to replace or recreate actors’ voices in statements to The edgeand spokesperson Jenna Klein told us that “the studio expressly instructed the filmmakers NOT to use AI in this film.”

“If AI had ever been used, it would have been by the filmmakers (while editing the first cuts of the film) and not by the studio, since they controlled the editorial,” Klein wrote, adding that the filmmakers were instructed to remove any “AI or non-SAG AFTRA actors” upon completion of the film.

Amazon also said that “numerous allegations” in the lawsuit are “categorically false” and that the company does not believe its copyrights have effectively expired on Camino House.