Maximum Overdrive: Joe Hill wants to remake Stephen King’s 1986 film

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Stephen King has written hundreds of short stories and more than sixty novels, but over his decades in the entertainment business, he has only directed one film: MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, a bugnuts crazy 1986 adaptation of his short story Trucks. (You can watch it HERE.) 

After a comet causes a radiation storm on Earth, machines come to life and turn against their makers. Holed up in a North Carolina truck stop, a group of survivors must fend for themselves against a mass of homicidal trucks. A diner cook, Bill Robinson (Emilio Estevez), emerges as the unlikely leader of the pack, attempting to find an escape plan for himself and the survivors, who include his boss, Bubba Hendershot (Pat Hingle), and a newlywed couple.

King's son Joe Hill is also a successful author and becoming a director doesn't seem to be a goal for him, with one exception. Speaking with Mick Garris on an upcoming episode of his podcast Post Mortem, Hill revealed that he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and direct a MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE remake.

I would only want to jump into directing if I had a chance to do the reboot of MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. If someone offered me the chance to write and direct a relaunch of MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, man, I'd jump at that in a second. And look, the time is right, okay? So basically, they're all the self-driving vehicles. So it's no longer a comet that sets them off, it's a virus in the electronics that sets them off. And so you've got these giant Tesla semi trucks, you know, wiping everyone out. I think it could be great."

Thanks to our friends at Bloody-Disgusting for getting their hands on that clip and letting the world know that Hill has MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE on his mind. Now what I want to see in the next few weeks is an announcement that a Hill version of MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE is actually going to be made.

I'm sure Hill would be able to make an entertaining movie out of this concept, but there's no way he could live up to his father's performance in the trailer for MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.

Trucks also served as the basis of a 1997 TV movie called TRUCKS (watch it HERE) that wasn't nearly as well-received as its predecessor, which wasn't very well-received to begin with. Hill's remake would have a low hurdle to clear to get better reviews than those movies.