Maximum Overdrive 2: Emilio Estevez pitched and wrote a sequel to his Stephen King movie (2025)

Stephen Kinghas written hundreds of short stories and more than sixty novels,but he has only directed one movie: the goofball 1986 filmMaximum Overdrive(watch itHERE). King has avoided directing ever since and star Emilio Estevez has said that not only does heregret working on the movie, but that King has even begged Estevez to forgive him for getting him into that mess. ButEstevez doesn’t regret his involvement with Maximum Overdrive so much that it would keep him from working on a sequel – in fact, he pitched and wrote a script for a Maximum Overdrive 2 himself!

Based on King’s short storyTrucks, Maximum Overdrivehas the following synopsis: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, 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, and a newlywed couple. Estevez was joined in the cast by Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, Yeardley Smith, John Short, Ellen McElduff, J.C. Quinn, Christopher Murney, Holter Graham, Frankie Faison, Pat Miller, Leon Rippy, and Giancarlo Esposito. The movie fell short of its $9 million budget at the box office, but has gathered a cult following over the years.

During an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this month, Estevez revealed, “In truth, and with the advent of more computer technology and AI and all of that, I started to imagine what a sequel to Maximum Overdrive would look like – and during the (2023 actors strike), I wrote one! Maximum Overdrive, I don’t have the rights to this any of this. This was just sort of… I started page 1, I started an idea, now on I’m on page 10, I’m on page 20, now it’s 50 pages, and I can’t stop. Dino De Laurentiis(‘s company) owns the rights to Maximum Overdrive. I created an insane world that takes place in a diner. So, Bill – if you remember the movie, and if you do, I’m sorry, it’s a terrible movie – but he was a short order cook, so now in the movie, it opens with, he’s got his own diner, he’s got a young daughter, and he’s got his crew, his people, and Guy Fieri is coming to do Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the day the world falls apart and machines turn. It was a cool idea, it’s a bitchin’ script, man. And De Laurentiis was like, ‘Nope, we have the rights to this, we’re not interested, we’re going to pursue our own thing.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’“

We could have gotten a Maximum Overdrive sequel written by, starring, and possibly directed by Emilio Estevez… and De Laurentiis shot it down. It’s a damn shame.

Would you like to see Emilio Estevez get the chance to have his Maximum Overdrive sequel? Let us know by leaving a comment below.