Emilio Estevez wrote a bonkers Maximum Overdrive Sequel!
📗 SUMMARY
- Ridley Scott chats with EQ
- He expands on tne Tyrell cut scene
- They may have been several Tyrell replicants
Maximum Overdrive (1986): still the only film to have Stephen King sitting in the directors chair, has refused to die, much like its killer lawnmowers. The motorised mayhem might not be over just yet — Emilio Estevez, our reluctant hero from the original, dropped a gleefully bizarre bombshell during his chat with Josh Horowitz on “Happy Sad Confused”: he once wrote his own wild sequel script.
“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 strike, I wrote one. 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 owns the rights to Maximum Overdrive. I created an insane world. 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.’”
Apparently penned during a Hollywood strike (unclear if it was the recent 2023 writer/actor chaos or another picket-line party), Estevez’s take would have jumped straight into 21st-century tech terror with AI running amok. His pitch? Set in an “insane world,” Bill Robinson survived by opening his own diner and raising a daughter, all while prepping for Guy Fieri to swing by for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives—just as all hell breaks loose again and humanity ends up on the skewer. Apparently “bitchin’,” according to Estevez. Sounds like Guy’s famous Camaro would’ve actually tried to devour him.
Sadly for lovers of vehicular deathsprees, the rights stayed barricaded behind the gates of Dino De Laurentiis’s legendary company, who quickly gave Estevez’s script four flat tyres and sent it rolling off into development hell: “Nope. We have the rights…We’re going to pursue our own thing.” Don’t expect Emilio’s meta-diner massacre any time soon.
But what about Maximum Overdrive 2? Is there hope that trucks will one day rise up against us on-screen once more?
Right now, it’s a matter of who holds those keys—and that’s strictly with the De Laurentiis Company since Dino himself kicked it back in 2010. They apparently have their own ideas brewing—potentially more reboot than sequel—but nothing has officially screeched out onto Route 66 yet.
Fun fact: Stephen King officially disowned Maximum Overdrive (1986) years ago, reportedly calling it “a moron movie,” though real horror fans know you can’t look away from that murderous soda machine scene. Meanwhile, King’s son Joe Hill, ever cheeky, joked in a 2020 episode of “Post Mortem With Mick Garris” that he’d reboot the whole thing with self-driving cars—a Black Mirror nightmare waiting to happen.
For now, though? It’s backseat status for this cult classic franchise—especially since fresh King adaptations are still rolling out regularly (The Monkey (2025) is cureently streaming). But let’s face it: after surviving goblin-faced trucks and killer vending machines once already, who wouldn’t tune in again for another round?
Resources & Further Reading:
Hilly Horror
Hilly love of horror knows no bounds. As a massive fan of slasher and ghost films, she has watched all of the Wrong Turn and Paranormal Activity films. Now that’s bravery at a scale we can’t beat.
