Production companies pay thousands of dollars for the rights to produce one of Stephen King’s works, but for a film school in Wales, the price was just one U.S. dollar.
A group of film students at the Blaenau Gwent Film Academy recently acquired the rights to King’s 2003 short story “Stationary Bike” for just a dollar.
“It’s an exciting thing for the community,” Ryan Probert, an actor at the school who will play the lead role in the film, told CTV News Channel on Friday.
“In the area that we are, these opportunities are sometimes few and far between and to have a project with a name such as Stephen King attached to it, it’s a big thing for everybody involved.”
The students earned the rights through King’s “Dollar Baby” contract program, where the world-renowned horror novelist offers the film rights to some of his lesser-known short stories for a dollar to students and young filmmakers. King lists 30 stories that are “up for adoption” on his website.
The only caveat of these contracts is the film must not be used for commercial gain without approval and King must receive a DVD copy of the work.
“Stationary Bike” tells the story of a man who begins using an exercise bike as a means of losing weight, but begins to have hallucinations while cycling.
“What starts out as something with good intentions turns into an obsessive ritual and pretty strange things start to happen,” said Probert.
Famous film director and writer Frank Darabont got his start in 1986 through a “Dollar Baby” contract for “The Woman in the Room,” which would later be a semi-finalist for an Oscar.
The impressive work would lead Darabront to adapt three of King’s stories into now-famous movies: “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile,” and “The Mist.”
Darabont formerly worked as the showrunner for AMC’s hit zombie thriller “The Walking Dead.”
