Emilio Estevez says Stephen King has apologized to him repeatedly for Maximum Overdrive. Not content with his huge success as a horror author, King took on directorial duties for the 1986 film adaptation of his short story “Trucks.” Estevez headed up the cast for the film, an apocalyptic tale about machines coming to life and gaining revenge on humans.
Unfortunately the movie that resulted from King’s first – and to this day only – foray into film directing turned out to be a total critical disaster. King himself later denounced Maximum Overdrive, calling it a “moron movie,” while admitting he was under the influence of substances during shooting. Indeed the film was a legitimate disaster for cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, who was injured during filming of a scene involving a runaway lawn mower. These days, the film has a reputation as a great bad movie, and there has even been talk of a reboot.
Maximum Overdrive star Estevez recently spoke about his own interactions with King over the years and revealed that the author has expressed remorse more than once over how his sole directorial effort turned out. In an interview with Vanity Fair ahead of the release of the new Mighty Ducks TV show, Estevez was asked if there was a project he looks back on with regret and singled out Maximum Overdrive:
Oh, God, yeah. I’m not speaking out of class because he knows it’s a terrible movie, but Stephen King often talks about his one directorial experience on Maximum Overdrive, which I was in. The few times that I’ve connected with him over the years, he’s like, “Can you forgive me for that?” I think at one point my mom said, “Why’d you do that movie?” I said, “I wanted to work with Stephen King.” And she said, “Couldn’t you have helped him paint his house?”
It’s clear from Estevez’s comments that both he and King regard Maximum Overdrive as a major misstep in their respective careers. However, the movie does to this day have its fans, including King’s author son Joe Hill. Recently, Hill went so far as to propose an idea for how to reboot the movie and improve upon it. In the original story, the vehicles mysteriously come to life after a comet passes overhead. In Hill’s updated idea, a computer virus is responsible for turning self-driving cars into literal killing machines.
It remains to be seen if Hill gets his chance to remake Maximum Overdrive and perhaps somewhat redeem his father’s notorious failure. There is certainly plenty of demand for movies and TV shows based on King’s works, and Hill himself has become a big name in horror, so maybe it could happen. And perhaps Estevez could be brought aboard as well, if in fact he even wants to revisit the experience of working on a Maximum Overdrive movie. On the other hand, it’s possible the whole premise of killer trucks is just too goofy to be made into a good movie, even with a clever new technological twist to the premise.
