The new Road House movie is now streaming on Amazon Prime, if you’re interested in spending your weekend with a very buff, tatted-up Jake Gyllenhaal. And really, who wouldn’t be interested in that?
Directed by Doug Liman, with a script by Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, this 2024 spin on the 1989 Patrick Swayze movie stars Gyllenhaal as a former UFC fighter hired as a bouncer at a bar in the Florida Keys. The bar, named only The Road House, has been dealing with some rowdy customers as of late. But they are no match for Dalton (Gyllenhaal), a man who politely inquires about his victims’ health insurance situation before he ruthlessly beats them up. He even drives them to hospital afterwards! He’s a nice guy! You know, except for the whole “beating people up” thing.
While the original ’80s movie took place in Missouri, this relocation to the Keys gives the 2024 Road House a tropical backdrop. The sense of place is key (pun intended) to the movie, with many a character commenting on the rundown nature of “Glass Key,” a small city in Florida. Read on to learn more about Glass Key and where the 2024 Road House movie was filmed.
Is Glass Key, Florida from Road House a real place?
No. Glass Key, Florida is a fictional town in the Florida Keys, invented for Road House. The Florida Keys, of course, are a real place… but Road House didn’t exactly film there.
Where was Road House 2024 filmed?
Road House was filmed on location—but not in the Florida Keys. Instead, the movie was filmed a bit further south, in the Dominican Republic, in late summer and fall of 2022. More specifically, the 2024 Road House movie filming locations included Guayacanes, a small city in the San Pedro de Macorís Province of the Dominican Republic, which is on the southern shore.
The Dominican Republican president, Luis Abinader, visited the set and shared photos on his Instagram in October 2022.
Though they weren’t really in Florida, director Doug Liman still wanted to make sure the vibes felt like the Sunshine State. The roadhouse restaurant—a set that was designed by production designer Greg Berry and built specifically for the film—was modeled after bars Liman visited in the Keys.
“I didn’t want the bar to feel like it was on a soundstage,” the director said in an interview for the Road House production notes. “Visiting the Keys, a lot of the bars don’t even have doors necessarily; they’re open to the outside. I really wanted to embrace that, and one way to do it was to build the bar for real in a spot that’s directly between a highway and the ocean. It was the most ideal way to shoot this movie because the scenes can flow from inside to outside. The sets that Greg and his art department created for this movie were so beautiful.”
In that same interview, production designer Greg Berry added, “If I were to put a label on it, the design itself would be described as mid-century modern, Tiki Polynesian. It was an amalgam of many conversations with Doug, who wanted something that was rooted in time, something that had been in the Keys for 50-some-odd years and felt like it had a sense of place. So we were thinking that this bar was built, maybe, late ’50s, early ’60s, and took that approach in the design of it.”
In fact, the restaurant set was so well-built, that it even managed to weather Hurricane Fiona, which blew through the DR while the movie was shooting, in September 2022. Gyllenhaal noted in the same interview, “It was so well-crafted that I think it should have become a real bar when we were finished with it.”
There were also a few Road House scenes in Las Vegas, Nevada. Specifically, the flashback sequences in which Dalton remembers his past life as a UFC fighter were filmed at MGM Grand Garden Arena, featuring Gyllenhaal in a staged fight with former UFC fighter Jay Hieron, after the UFC 285 ceremonial weigh-ins in March 2023.
So there you have it! If you want to discover the “real” Glass Key, you’ll have to book a vacation to the DR. Take me with you?