The new Road House stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a UFC fighter who “takes a job as a bouncer at a rough-and-tumble roadhouse in the Florida Keys, but soon discovers that not everything is what it seems in this tropical paradise,” which you probably guessed from the title since it’s exactly what happens in the original. Except instead of a UFC fighter, Patrick Swayze played a philosophizing NYC student who bashed skulls under the tutelage of Sam Elliott (aka the best in the business). According to Deadline, producer Joel Silver and director Doug Liman are taking the UFC angle seriously, hiring two-time champ and so-so whiskey salesman Conor McGregor for an undefined role. Really, Gyllenhaal’s is the only role we know about (since he’ll be taking the Swayze starring bit), but McGregor won’t be playing himself.
Financed by Amazon Studios, the project starts filming in the Dominican Republic next month with Billy Magnussen, Daniela Melchior, Gbemisola Ikumelo, and Lukas Gage alongside Gyllenhaal and McGregor. Who’s a good guy? Who’s a bad guy? Will they all have to face off against a Florida man who breaks into a meth lab using a crocodile? We’ll have to wait until the first trailer to see, but if it’s true to the spirit of Florida, they should at least consider it.
To be fair, since they’ve moved the action from Missouri to modern-day Florida, the remake had better be a lot wilder than the 1989 original and only slightly less wild than the Broadway musical version.
