Jake Gyllenhaal is recruiting a recent collaborator to direct Road House 2.
Per Puck’s Matt Belloni, Guy Ritchie is in talks to direct the Road House sequel for Amazon MGM Studios. Gyllenhaal will return to star. Will Beall, who co-wrote Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, will pen Road House 2.
Ritchie is best known for his work in crime comedies, like Snatch, RocknRolla, The Gentlemen, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Ritchie has experience working with famous IP, including the Sherlock Holmes franchise and Aladdin, Disney’s 2019 live-action movie that grossed over $1 billion worldwide.
If a deal is reached, the Road House sequel marks another collaboration between Ritchie and Gyllenhaal, who worked together on 2023’s The Covenant and In the Grey, which is in post-production.
After a few years of inactivity, Ritchie’s slate of movies and TV shows continues to grow. MobLand, a Ritchie-produced show, is currently airing on Paramount+, while Fountain of Youth streams next month on Apple TV+. Additionally, The Gentleman season 2 begins production this spring, and Wife & Dog is currently filming.
Directed by Doug Liman, Road House followed Elwood Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter hired to bounce at a Florida Keys roadhouse. Besides Gyllenhaal, Road House starred Daniela Melchior, Billy Magnussen, Jessica Williams, Joaquim de Almeida, JD Pardo, Austin Post, and Conor McGregor. Liman’s movie is a remake of 1989’s Road House, with the late Patrick Swayze as James Dalton.
Released in March 2024, Road House became a massive hit on streaming, attracting over 50 million worldwide viewers on Prime Video and becoming the studio’s most-watched produced film debut ever worldwide.
Despite the film’s success, Liman publicly called out Amazon for refusing to put the movie in theaters. Liman wrote an open letter to Deadline, expressing his frustration with the direct-to-streaming approach. Liman initially planned to boycott the film’s 2024 SXSW premiere but changed his mind and ultimately attended.
Due to Liman’s anger toward Amazon, it’s easy to see why the studio pivoted to finding another director like Ritchie.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.