Dollar Baby
King retains the rights to his work, but as he began to experience commercial success, he decided to use the Dollar Baby to help the next generation of creatives.
I ask them to sign a paper promising that no resulting film will be exhibited commercially without approval, and that they send me a videotape of the finished work.
It was eventually released in 1986 on VHS by Granite Entertainment Group Interglobal Home Video as part of the Stephen King's Night Shift Collection, along with New York University film student Jeff Schiro's adaptation of "The Boogeyman", and John Woodward's "Disciples of the Crow".
Darabont later wrote adaptations and directed three feature films based on Stephen King's novels: The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile.
He wrote about two student film adaptations of King stories: "The Last Rung on the Ladder" (1987) by James Cole and Dan Thron, and "The Lawnmower Man" (1987) by Jim Gonis.
[4] As Dollar Babies were not intended to be seen by the public, beyond screening at film festivals and school presentations, and were not commercially sold or openly traded prior to the advent of the Internet, many of them were not known to the Stephen King fan community.
[5] In 2000, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Jay Holben made a Dollar Deal to adapt "Paranoid: A Chant," a 100-line poem that appears in King's Skeleton Crew.
[7] Influenced by the success of "Paranoid," in 2002 filmmaker Peter Sullivan wrote and produced a dollar baby based on the short story Night Surf.
A precursor to the novel The Stand, "Night Surf" tells the story of a smaller group of teens who seek sanctuary at a beach house while the Captain Trips strain of the flu devastates the population.
The festival was held in the D. P. Corbett Business Theater at the University of Maine, Orono, Stephen King's alma mater (1966–1970).
His adaptation of "Everything's Eventual" tells the story of a young man with mysterious powers who is recruited by an equally enigmatic corporation.
The only other Dollar Babies to have been approved for distribution rights were Frank Darabont's "The Woman in the Room" and Jeff Schiro's "The Boogeyman"; these were released as Stephen King's Nightshift Collection.
In 2021, Barker Street Cinema hosted the Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby Film Festival during the COVID-19 pandemic.
[13][14] It is a common misconception that the filmmakers of the Dollar Babies have optioned or obtained the legal rights to the original King stories.
"[22] King's unorthodox arrangement of granting limited permission and retaining rights is the reason the films cannot be commercially released nor can the filmmakers garner any profit from the works.
For example, the story "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" has been adapted seven times: by James Renner, Anthony Kaneaster, Scott Albanese, Chi Laughlin and Natalie Mooallem (as All That You Love), by Robert Sterling and Brian Berkowitz (as The Secret Transit Codes of America's Highways), and by Hendrik Harms and Chloe Brown under other titles.
[2] Darabont's The Woman in the Room, in addition to being photographed by the cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia (Glengarry Glen Ross), made the semi-finalist list for Academy Award consideration in 1983.
Rolling Stone magazine's David Wild said of the film, "Rarely has paranoia been so much fun...Jay Holben has created a stunning and artful rendering of madness, turning a poem by Stephen King into a vivid and compelling nightmare vision.
"[7] Noted King historian Andrew Rausch called Mann's Popsy, "A superb gem of a film that excels in every way imaginable.
