Summary
- Joe Hill's "The Fireman" novel is ripe for a movie adaptation due to its unique and eerie story.
- Hill's compelling tales have been successfully adapted for film and TV, creating a strong platform for future adaptations.
- While there are upcoming Stephen King movie adaptations, making a film of Hill's work, like "The Fireman," would be a fresh move.
Stephen King has brought so many eerie and emotional stories to life, and his son Joe Hill wrote one particularly gripping book that should be made into a movie. While King's son Owen King writes more realistic and true-to-life stories, Hill crafts tales that are as terrifying as his father's. The Carrie author praised the 2025 movie adaptation of Hill's 2007 short story Abraham's Boys, which tells a new story about Dracula.
King fans are excited about his upcoming adaptations, including a fresh take on Carrie from the talented Mike Flanagan and a remake of The Running Man starring Glen Powell. But, while there is an upcoming movie adaptation of The Stand directed by Doug Liman, that feels like the wrong move. Since there are already two The Stand miniseries from 1994 and 2020, why not make a movie of a great Hill book instead?
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Joe Hill's The Fireman Should Get A Movie Adaptation Instead Of Stephen King's The Stand
There may be countless post-apocalyptic movies, but Joe Hill's 2016 novel The Fireman is unique, and it deserves a movie adaptation. The story follows Harper Grayson, a nurse in New Hampshire who lives in a world where people become infected with a fungus and experience what they call Dragonscale. After someone gets sick, their skin turns gold and black, and they then die a fiery death.
There are many similarities between The Stand and The Fireman, including the grim and scary setting and the fact that likable, caring characters are helping each other and looking for a safe place to land. After the success of the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, it seems like the perfect time to make a movie of Hill's well-crafted book. While some of the characters in The Last of Us are darker and more intense, The Fireman does explore similar themes of life, death, grappling with the past and the future, and creating meaningful relationships along the way. Since so many fans were disappointed by The Last of Us season 2, there's definitely an audience ready and waiting to see a post-apocalyptic story. The Fireman feels realistic, and that would help set it apart.
There have been attempts to bring this creepy yet uplifting story to the big and small screen. Although Deadline reported in 2016 that Fox bought the rights to the novel, the movie never got made. Then, in 2022, The Hollywood Reporter shared that Hill and Walden Media were working on a TV adaptation. While that might still happen, there haven't been any updates or details. Although a TV show would work since it would give the writers enough time to dive deep into Hill's excellent characters, The Fireman novel tells a complete story and would be a satisfying movie.
Since the characters spontaneously combust, The Fireman is an incredibly haunting story, but it still manages to feel hopeful. Like King's The Life of Chuck, In a 2017 interview with The Huffington Post, Hill mentioned the tone of the novel and said:
"I wanted to explore the sunny side of the apocalypse. "I don't think there's been enough fiction to look at the warmer, happier aspects of the end of the world."
He added:
"you can only have tragedy when you also recognize things that are good. When you see something wonderful that can't be protected--that's what stirs tragic feelings."
Joe Hill's Stories Horns, NOS4A2, And The Black Phone Have Been Adapted For Film And TV (Among Other Stories)
Joe Hill has had a few of his memorable stories turned into movies and TV shows. His 2010 novel, Horns, was adapted into a 2014 horror movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as a man named Ignatius "Ig" Perrish who grows horns one day and learns people are spilling secrets because of them.
NOS4A2, which was published in 2013, was turned into an AMC series that aired for two seasons in 2019 and 2020. The show is about Victoria "Vic" McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings) who has a special connection to Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto), a paranormal being who eats children's souls.
Some of Hill's haunting stories have been adapted for Netflix. Hill and Stephen King co-wrote the short story In The Tall Grass, which resulted in a lackluster Netflix movie that was released in 2019. He also wrote the comic book series Locke & Key, which was made into a magical and fun Netflix series that has three seasons. Most notably, Hill wrote the short story The Black Phone, which became a Blumhouse horror movie in 2022. The Black Phone 2, which has a terrifying trailer, will be released on October 17th, 2025.
- Birthdate
- September 21, 1947
- Birthplace
- Portland, Maine
- Notable Projects
- The Shining, Cujo, The Shawshank Redemption, It, Carrie
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