Dollar Baby

The Dollar Baby was an arrangement in which American author Stephen King would grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers or theater producers to adapt one of his short stories for $1. 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. The term may be used to refer to both the adaptation itself and the person adapting it; for example, "The Sun Dog" was made as a Dollar Baby and filmmaker Matt Flesher became a Dollar Baby upon adapting it.
The production budgets have ranged from a few hundred dollars to over $60,000 for projects such as Umney's Last Case, and the film formats range from home video to professional 35 mm film.
According to the official Stephen King website, the Dollar Baby program ended in December 2023.

History

As King explained in his introduction to the published shooting script for Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption, "Around 1977 or so, when I started having some popular success, I saw a way to give back a little of the joy the movies had given me."

'77 was the year young film makers – college students, for the most part – started writing me about the stories I'd published, wanting to make short films out of them. Over the objections of my accountant, who saw all sorts of possible legal problems, I established a policy which still holds today. I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written, so long as the film rights are still mine to assign. 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. For this one-time right I ask a dollar. I have made the dollar-deal, as I call it, over my accountant's moans and head-clutching protests sixteen or seventeen times as of this writing .

Once the film was made and King received his copy, he explains, "...I'd look at the films... then put them up on a shelf I had marked 'Dollar Babies'."
Frank Darabont was 20 years old when he made his Dollar Baby adaptation of "The Woman in the Room". 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. The latter two films were nominated for multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture.
Author Stephen J. Spignesi was one of the first to publicly discuss the Dollar Babies in his exhaustive volume The Stephen King Encyclopedia. He wrote about two student film adaptations of King stories: "The Last Rung on the Ladder" by James Cole and Dan Thron, and "The Lawnmower Man" by Jim Gonis.

1977–1996

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. In 1996, when King first publicly discussed the Dollar Deal policy, he mentioned "sixteen or seventeen" such Dollar Babies. It has been difficult to account for them. Although Frank Darabont originally asked in 1980 to adapt King's "The Woman in the Room", he took three years to complete the film.

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1982	The Boogeyman	Jeffrey C. Shiro	Given commercial distribution rights
1983	Disciples of the Crow	John Woodward	Based on "Children of the Corn"
1983	The Woman in the Room	Frank Darabont	Given commercial distribution rights
1986	Srazhenie	Mikhail Titov	Animation based on "Battleground"
1987	The Last Rung on the Ladder	James Cole Dan Thron
1987	The Lawnmower Man	Jim Gonis
1988	Here There Be Tygers	Guy Maddin	Never produced
1989	Cain Rose Up	David C. Spillers
1993	The Sun Dog	Matt Flesher
1996	The Man Who Loved Flowers	Andrew Newman

2000–2025

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. In 2002 the Paranoid short film was the first Dollar Baby to be released - with King's permission - for a limited time on the Internet. Again with King's permission, this film was the first Dollar Baby to be released on a commercial DVD, in a package with Total Movie Magazine, a short-lived offshoot of the U.K. publication Total Film.
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. This short film would later become a calling card for Sullivan, who went on to a career producing and directing over 100 films for television.
In September 2004, fellow Dollar Baby James Renner organized the first public film festival screenings of Dollar Babies. The festival was held in the D. P. Corbett Business Theater at the University of Maine, Orono, Stephen King's alma mater. As a student, he had written for The Maine Campus newspaper. Renner organized a second Dollar Baby festival in September 2005 at the same location.
On the Internet, the largest public collection of the Dollar Babies has been put together by Bernd Lautenslager from the Netherlands. Many of the films listed above were available for download at a site called "Stephen King Short Movies". At the request of King's representatives, the films are no longer available for download. To date, the only short that King specifically granted permission to play for a limited time on the Internet was Paranoid.
In October 2009, director/producer J. P. Scott completed the first full-length Dollar Baby. His adaptation of "Everything's Eventual" tells the story of a young man with mysterious powers who is recruited by an equally enigmatic corporation. Shortly after receiving a copy of the movie, King viewed the film and was "very impressed" by it. Unusually, he granted J. P. Scott the rights to theatrically distribute the film. 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.
The first British Dollar Baby was the 2011 adaptation of "Mute", produced by Gemma Rigg and directed by Jacqueline Wright.
In 2012, Russian director Maria Ivanova finished "Beachworld" as a Dollar Baby project. The film was screened on several film festivals around the world. It is the first official Russian Dollar Baby.
In 2015, British director Matthew Rowney produced and directed "I Am the Doorway" as a Dollar Baby project. He won more than 41 international film awards and screened the short film at several US Comic Cons. Since then, several other filmmakers have chosen to adapt the same story.
In 2018, Selina Sondermann began production on "Dedication". This is the second Dollar Baby to be adapted in Germany. Also in 2018, Canadian filmmaker Jon Mann released "Popsy."
In 2019, the Blaenau Gwent Film Academy produced "Stationary Bike", which won various international awards.
In 2019, Walter Perez directed, produced and adapted "One for the Road". The short film was titled "Into the Night". After two successful screenings at the Dryden Theatre and Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, the film entered the film festival circuit in 2020. The film received acclaim and award nominations at various festivals. In 2021, "Into the Night" was qualified for consideration in the 93rd Academy Awards, under the Best Live Action Short Film Category.
In 2021, Stephen King Dollar Baby: The Book by Anthony Northrup was released.
In 2021, Barker Street Cinema hosted the Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby Film Festival during the COVID-19 pandemic. It virtually screened 25 films created under the Dollar Deal.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures curated a program of 6 short films to represent the program that span approximately 45 years: Jay Holben’s Paranoid, Disciples of the Crow, Dedication by Selina Sondermann, Jon Mann’s Popsy, Beachworld by Jackie Perez und If You Tell Your Dreams… The screening will take place November 19th at Ted Mann Theater.

Year	Title	Director	Notes
2002	Paranoid: A Chant	Jay Holben	The first Dollar Baby released on a commercial DVD
2002	Night Surf	Peter Sullivan
2006	Umney's Last Case	Rodney Altman
2009	In The Deathroom	Luke Cheney	First adaptation of the short story.
2009	Everything's Eventual	J. P. Scott	Given commercial distribution rights
2011	Mute	Jacqueline Wright
2012	Beachworld	Maria Ivanova	First official Russian Dollar Baby.
2012	Survivor Type	Billy Hanson
2012	The Boogeyman	Jenny Januszewski
2013	The Boogeyman	Armando Franco
2013	Grey Matter	Red Clark
2015	I Am The Doorway	Matthew Rowney
2015	Beachworld	Chad Bolling
2018	Dedication	Selina Sondermann
2018	Popsy	Jon Mann
2018	One For The Road	Joseph Horning
2019	Stationary Bike	Alexander Haydn Jones
2019	Into the Night	Walter Perez	Adaptation of One For The Road
2019	Here There Be Tygers	Polly Schattel	Night Frizz Productions, screenplay by Jennifer Trudrung
2019	Uncle Otto's Truck	Brian Johnson
2019	Vinton's Lot	Jamie Dearden	Adaptation of A Very Tight Place
2020	Beachworld	Jackie Perez
2020	The Passenger	Alexander Bruckner	Adaptation of Rest Stop
2020	Rest Stop	Joshua Lozano
2020	Mute	Rob Darren
2020	Cain Rose Up/Garrish	A.J. Gribble
2020	The Man Who Loved Flowers	Mark Hensley
2020	All That You Love Will Be Carried Away	Michael Lamberti
2021	Graduation Afternoon	Rob Padilla Jr.	Adaptation of Graduation Afternoon
2021	That Feeling	Paul Inman	Adaptation of That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French
2022	Cain Rose Up	Miguel Alejandro Marquez
2023	One For The Road	William R.A. Rush
2023	Tudo o que Você Ama Será Destruído	Joao Augusto De Nardo
2023	I Know What You Need	Julia Marchese
2023	Luckey Quarter	L.E. Peralta	First animated short film adaptation
2024	Norma	Samantha Hussey	Based on the story "The Man Who Loved Flowers"
2024	The Reach	Luca Caserta	Produced by Nuove Officine Cinematografiche
2024	The Reach	Matty Thomas Taylor	First animation ever made of this story.
2024	Willa	Carol Del Mar
2024	The Dedication	Adrienne Camille Lunson	First Dollar Baby from Japan