The streaming wars have been incredibly good to Stephen King. It feels like virtually every service has a piece of the King pie - Netflix handled Gerald’s Game and 1922, DirecTV got Mr. Mercedes, Apple TV+ is developing Lisey’s Story, Hulu has Castle Rock, and HBO just enjoyed a huge ratings hit with The Outsider. HBO’s parent company Warner Bros. is busily cranking out King adaptations for the multiplexes (whenever they open back up), including last year’s It: Chapter Two and Doctor Sleep and the recently announced Revival. Now, reports that HBO Max is throwing its hat into the streaming wars to adapt King’s short story Throttle into a film, as reported by Comingsoon. Luckily HBO is so familiar with the Game of Thrones. (Get it? Because they’re all fighting over the King? Ehhh, you get it.)

Appropriately, King wrote Throttle, a story about a father and son who lead a motorcycle gang being relentlessly pursued by a big rig, with his son Joe Hill. Hill is no stranger to the streaming wars either, having penned the graphic novel Locke & Key with artist Gabriel Rodríguez that was recently adapted into a series by Netflix. If Throttle sounds a little familiar, that’s intentional - it was originally included in a collection titled He Is Legend, a tribute to influential author Richard Matheson. King and Hill’s novella is a specific nod to Matheson’s story Duel, which was famously adapted into a film by a young Steven Spielberg.

The adaptation will be written by Leigh Dana Jackson (Sleepy Hollow, Raising Dion) and produced by David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight, Terminator: Dark Fate) with Keith Levine. Obviously, there’s no news of when production might begin just yet, as pretty much everything is still shut down. So it’s a safe bet that we won’t actually get to see the film for another or two at least. As a fan of King, Hill, Spielberg, and Matheson, I’m extremely curious to see how Throttle turns out, and how it compares to its classic inspiration Duel. For more on King, check out everything we know about the upcoming adaptation of Revival, and here's how to tune into HBO Max when it launches later this month.