The kids just can’t get enough of that Stephen King! It certainly feels like nobody can, judging by the number of his works that have been and are being adapted. Well, it looks like another King property is about to get the movie treatment, with two big factors of note being included. As it turns out, this new film, Throttle, is based on another book Stephen King co-wrote with his son, Joe Hill, and it’s headed to HBO Max.
Reported by Deadline, Throttle is a father and son story from this family-bound team. The novella is a road battle between a family-led biker gang and a tractor trailer with a maniac behind the wheel, all on a hot desert highway. From that basic summary alone, this sounds like an episode of Sons of Anarchy that’s remaking Steven Spielberg’s Duel, and that’s not a put-down. In fact, I’d pay to see that now.
As it stands, there’s no director on board for Throttle, but there is writing talent that’s been brought onto the project. The novella will be adapted by writer Leigh Dana Jackson, whose most recent credits include acting as co-executive producer on the Netflix original series Raising Dion.
Which makes the fact that Throttle is being adapted as an HBO Max original film all the more exciting is that there’s the potential that this film could get a limited theatrical release. But even if it doesn’t, a brand new Stephen King and Joe Hill movie could, at the very least, be headed to our TV screens. No matter how you slice that, it’s a win for fans of the King family.
This comes as Joe Hill’s hit AMC series NOS4A2 is about to enter its second season, and two other Stephen King projects, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Revival, have entered into development as well. That last announcement is particularly notable, as HBO Max is the streaming home base of the WarnerMedia family, and Revival is currently being written by Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan for Warner Bros.
It’s a good time to be in the King family business, for sure, so Throttle’s development isn’t all that surprising. The fact that a streaming platform is bringing the work of this best-selling team in front of the cameras is also to be expected, as last year’s In The Tall Grass provided some excitement for the folks at Netflix.
But it’s hard not to get excited about a project where either Stephen King or Joe Hill’s names are invoked. So while Throttle is currently in its early development phases, we’re ready to go wherever its vicious endgame takes us.
If you’re looking for some more King clan action in the immediate future, you can watch Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 when it returns to AMC for Season 2 at 9 PM ET, on Sunday, June 21. Or, you can catch Season 1 of The Outsider, in its entirety, on HBO’s streaming platforms.
