37 of the Funniest Tweets from Wednesday, February 28, 2024

From its own director boycotting the premiere to a disagreement about its distribution, the Jake Gyllenhaal-led remake of Road House hasn’t exactly had the smoothest ride toward its March 8th release. Now, just 10 days before it hits Prime Video, a new controversy has developed. R. Lance Hill, who wrote the original 1989 film starring Patrick Swayze, is suing MGM for alleged copyright infringement. The suit boasts a litany of allegations, ranging from “key literary elements” being copied to being blocked from reclaiming copyrights. But perhaps the most damning accusation is the suggestion that the studio used A.I. to replicate actors’ voices amid the 2023 actors’ strike in an effort to get the film finished before the copyright expired. In a statement to Deadline, Amazon categorically denied the accusations that are “completely without merit.” Whatever the case may be, the remake has truly taken a bouncer’s beating from start to finish. 

Meanwhile, a bevy of Hollywood writers, including Shane Black and Jim Herzfeld, have teamed up to develop Gauntlet — a new tech platform that will keep humans assessing screenplays rather than A.I. As agencies and production companies increasingly use technology to replace a duty historically held by interns and assistants, Gauntlet aims to counter that rising emergence with a program that keeps “humanity in the mix” and provides “the best screenplays a legitimate and viable path to a greenlight.” The program seeks to offer writers a fair shot instead of letting them be at the mercy of software that grades a script solely on keywords and box-office algorithms. 

No form of A.I. could produce the tweets that had us in stitches today — they all came from the heart. Today’s funniest ones include those about Buckingham Palace tomfoolery, the epidemic of friendultery and the best gorilla joke of 1897.