In November 2016, Josh Moore announced he was leaving Lucas Entertainment, saying he would not be forced to work for a company that had put his health at risk. What followed is one of the strangest documented episodes in recent gay adult industry history.sourced
By February 2017, Str8UpGayPorn reported that Michael Lucas had been emailing studios across the United States and Europe asserting an exclusive contract and attempting to block Moore from being hired elsewhere. NakedSword had already publicly declined to work with him under the pressure.
Then someone read the contract. It was dated 20 February 1993 — twenty-two years before it was being invoked. Lawyers cleared him to work immediately.sourced
What he built afterwards
Moore rebuilt from there, and quickly. UKHotJocks in 2017, then a CockyBoys run through that year, then Men.com. In June 2019 he signed as a Falcon Studios exclusive — joining, as he put it, a very short list of British men to hold that distinction. He renewed in January 2021 and extended again in April 2023. That same month he won Favorite Gay Model at the Pornhub Awards.sourced
Then in January 2024 he told Pride he was finished with the studio system entirely.
For me, studio porn is obsolete. I'm way beyond that now. So many studios have f***ed me over. They pay you nothing.— Josh Moore to Pride, 1 January 2024
In the same interview he made a broader criticism of what studio work looks like from the inside — the sameness of the casting, the narrowness of the beauty standard, and unsafe working conditions on some sets.
Eighteen months later, he went back
In June 2025 he appeared in Dylan James Forever — a Lucas Entertainment release. Credited, as he had been in 2016, as Josh Rider. Confirmed independently by two outlets.sourced
Nobody appears to have written about it. A performer returning to the studio that once tried to keep him out of work across two continents, under the name he used when it happened, is a story — and as far as we can tell it has gone entirely unremarked.
A note on the alias, because it matters for anyone searching: Josh Rider is not a retired early credit. It is the name on both his earliest Lucas work and his newest.