The Best Stephen King Project Closes After Nearly Half A Century

It almost feels like the end of an era. Established in 1977, against the will of his financial advisors, the Dollar Baby allowed film students, aspiring filmmakers and producers a one-time permission to adapt Stephen King’s short story for only $1.

Unfortunately, the program is now terminated, and the reason for disbandment was not explained in detail. King also shared the news via social media, where many aspiring screenwriters, producers, and filmmakers thanked him for allowing them to bring many of his stories to life.

Stephen King’s Dollar Baby program began after the grand master of horror received a letter from young filmmakers about the stories he’d publish, in a desire to make short films of Stephen King’s works.

Thus, King granted cinematography students the right to make a movie out of any short story he published and still held the film rights, with the contractual obligation that they wouldn’t show their work in a commercial capacity.

Meaning, they wouldn’t intentionally profit from the adaptation without explicit approval.

Furthermore, once the adaptation was finished, the filmmakers were under a contractual obligation to send Stephen King a tape of the resulting Dollar Baby film.

One of the more prominent examples of successful Dollar Babies was Frank Darabont’s The Woman in the Room, which King himself deems the best short film made from his work.

This work alone established trust between Stephen King and Darabont, resulting in King granting him the film right to his novella, Rita Heyworth and Shawshank Redemption.

As you might’ve guessed, the novella was the base for the 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption—a massive mega-hit among movie lovers. Darabont also adapted The Green Mile novella into the same name Tom Hanks movie released in 1999, and 2007’s The Mist.

The latter was the weakest of the three, but it was still a massive success among the audiences and critics. All of these releases made Darabont into a super famous director among the movie buffs, though he had previously established himself as a good screenwriter.

Given the limited nature of the contract, Stephen King’s Dollar Baby movies are difficult to track down, but it’s worth mentioning that King’s work has attracted moviemakers worldwide.

There have been Dollar Baby movie festivals in the past in the US, but also in Spain, Brazil, and Belgium, and you can even find an occasional Dollar Baby movie at dedicated websites online.

Now that the program has concluded, we have to wonder whether King stopped granting film rights to people or if he just stopped charging $1 for the rights.

The Dollar Baby program might be over, but adaptations of Stephen King’s work never seem to cease; there are currently a dozen of adaptation projects that are based on various King’s novels, novellas, and short stories.