Stephen King’s “Dollar Baby” initiative, which allowed filmmakers to adapt his short stories for the nominal fee of $1, has reached its end after over four decades. King’s official website confirmed the program’s discontinuation, stating, “The Dollar Baby Program was disbanded in December 2023. Contracts issued before December 2023 will be honored and will remain approved for one year from their instantiation, as per the terms of their contract. There will be no Dollar Baby extensions after December 1st, 2023.”

On his X account, King revealed that the program ceased because “Margaret, the Mistress of Dollar Babies, is retiring.”

King himself articulated the inception of the Dollar Baby program in the 1996 introduction for Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption screenplay, derived from King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. He expressed, “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.” He continued, “I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written (not the novels, that would be ridiculous), 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.”

Though the program has ended, it’s notable that a few Dollar Babies received official distribution, such as The Woman in the Room, which was released alongside Dollar Baby adaptations of The Boogeyman and Children of the Corn on the Stephen King’s Night Shift Collection VHS.

While the Dollar Baby program’s conclusion is regrettable, it’s likely that filmmakers will continue creating non-profit adaptations of King’s stories, albeit without the nominal fee arrangement.