Anna Daniels
Father-son horror legends Stephen King and Joe Hill occasionally join forces to pen a tale of terror, and one of their collaborations is headed to the screen. Throttle, a short story about a gang of bikers being chased by a big rig truck, is being developed as a feature by HBO Max, with the prolific David S. Goyer producing and Leigh Dana Jackson handling the script.
Deadline has the scoop on a Throttle movie, adapted from the short story by Joe Hill and Stephen King. The story, which is very much influenced by Steven Spielberg’s Duel, follows a gang of bikers – known as The Tribe – who end up in the midst of a bloody altercation and then hit the road. Along the way, they become the targets of a seemingly psychotic trucker who keeps trying to run them down with his big rig. It’s a fun story, but there’s not a whole lot to it. It’s mostly one scene after another of the truck appearing seemingly from nowhere and running over a few bikers. Rinse and repeat. And while Spielberg was able to do wonders with a similar scenario, I’m guessing the film adaptation of Throttle is going to take some liberties with the source material.
This won’t be the first King-Hill team-up to get the adaptation treatment. Their short story In the Tall Grass was turned into a Netflix movie last year, with mixed results (I kind of enjoyed it, but I wish the film had chickened out on the story’s incredibly nasty, unhappy ending). Leigh Dana Jackson, whose writing credits include TV shows like Sleepy Hollow, Scream: The TV Series, 24: Legacy, and Raising Dion, will write the Throttle script.
David S. Goyer and Keith Levine are producing through their Phantom Four company. Phantom Four is also behind the delayed, but highly-anticipated (by me) horror movie Antlers, and the upcoming horror flick The Night House, which I saw and enjoyed at Sundance. King adaptations remain a hot commodity, with several currently in the works, including Revival, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, yet another Children of the Corn movie, the TV series Overlook (which is also headed to HBO Max), ‘Salem’s Lot, The Dark Half, From a Buick 8, Lisey’s Story, and more. Hill adaptations aren’t as common, but they’re starting to take off. So far, Hill’s book Horns has been turned into a film, his novel NOS4A2 is now a series on AMC, and his comic Locke & Key is a Netflix show.
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