Look for the upstart templates locally only.

playbooks/roles/gunicorn/tasks/upstart.yml

 # write the gunicorn upstart script for {{ service_variant }}
 - name: writing {{ service_variant }} upstart script to /etc/init
   sudo: True
-  template: src={{ item }} dest=/etc/init/{{ service_variant }}.conf owner=root group=root
-  first_available_file:
-  - "{{ local_dir }}/gunicorn/templates/{{ service_variant }}.conf.j2"
-  # seems like paths in first_available_file must be relative to the playbooks dir
-  - "roles/gunicorn/templates/{{ service_variant }}.conf.j2"
+  template: src={{ service_variant }}.conf.j2 dest=/etc/init/{{ service_variant }}.conf owner=root group=root
   tags:
   - upstart
   - gunicorn