UFC star Conor McGregor will make his first foray into feature films with a role in a remake of “Road House,” McGregor’s spokesperson Karen J. Kessler confirmed to ESPN.
Jake Gyllenhaal will star in the movie, which is a new take on the classic 1980s cult hit that starred Patrick Swayze. Amazon Prime Video is the movie studio. Deadline was first to report the news Wednesday of McGregor’s involvement.
“Conor McGregor is very excited to expand his storied career to Hollywood and join with Jake Gyllenhaal in this reimagining of ‘Road House,’ a beloved classic,” Kessler said in a statement. “While fighting remains his top focus, this is the beginning of another successful venture in the McGregor empire. He is eager to get started filming.”
McGregor, 34, is still recovering from a fractured leg he suffered in a July 2021 fight against Dustin Poirier. He has not fought since then. But the Irish former UFC double champion has still been busy outside the Octagon. McGregor and his team sold the majority of his Proper Twelve whiskey brand to Jose Cuervo in April 2021 in a deal worth upward of $600 million. Last year, McGregor was ranked by Forbes as the world’s highest-paid athlete.
According to Deadline, Gyllenhaal will star as the main character in “Road House,” as a former UFC fighter who becomes a bouncer in a Florida Keys bar. McGregor’s role is unknown, but Deadline reported that he would be playing an original character and not himself. The movie will go into production this month in the Dominican Republic and will stream on Prime Video at a date to be determined, per Deadline.
McGregor is the UFC’s most popular fighter ever, headlining some of the biggest moneymaking pay-per-views in UFC history. He was the first fighter to hold two titles in two different UFC divisions concurrently and crossed over into boxing against Floyd Mayweather in 2017 in the second-biggest pay-per-view of all time. McGregor has been on a skid lately, with just one win since 2016.