"Mr. Mercedes" TV series

[Rrty]

All right, Ms. Mod, walk me through the thought process on this one.

How did King's agents decide on Sonar Entertainment? I thought that was a bit of an odd choice.

Will this be on a major network, Hulu, AMC? Did King decide to get this onto TV to promote the next two books? I assume that the series will start airing at least by the time the third book is published. That should really help out, yet it would have seemed that King would have waited until the third book was out before selling the rights (I actually think that was smart to do, but I didn't think he would do that, I think he is more of a mogul than we know, or someone in his organization is, at least).

Do you think this will hit the air before 11/22/63?

A very interesting development. It's fascinating what's happening in the media space. In the past, this would have been a movie. Now, everyone is trying for multi-episodic television. And I would assume this will be produced under the model as described by CBS' Les Moonves, who I believe said that Under the Dome was profitable before it aired because of risk-reducing sales to overseas markets and Amazon's entertainment service?

Also, this can't be one of those rights-for-a-dollar deals, I assume. With all the various over-the-top-distribution ambitions out there by so many media companies, someone like King probably will see a lot of his material in the next few years get optioned for non-theatrical content development. And of course I think some companies are trying to "Marvel-ize" the King canon to some extent. Below are two interesting articles related to the subject. Incidentally, the one about all the stuff in development right now I think is mistaken on several points, but it's not a big deal. Most notable from that article is the idea of a series called The Shop; not sure if that really is in development or not, that might be wishful thinking. And I think we all at one time or another thought about The Shop as a TV series.

My personal pitch for a limited-TV series would be one hosted by King called Dollar Babies. It could be on IFC, AMC, HBO, wherever, and it would showcase several adaptations of King's early short stories. Each episode would show four iterations of the same story: The Man Who Loved Flowers, The Jaunt, etc. The director who nails it would be selected to write and direct an original story written by King. After about five episodes, King hands off five story treatments to the ten directors, and they make an anthology film.

A Stephen King Movie Universe: Warner Bros. Big Opportunity

Every Stephen King Movie and TV Show in Development

Moderator

 

[Moderator]

His agents don't decide who does the financing or distribution--the people who are requesting the film option have to bring that to the table when they're negotiating the rights. Assuming Stephen and his agent think their proposal is workable, they go from there. No, it was not done to promote the next two books as they would have been written, published, and promoted the same as they always are. More likely it was the other way around--those optioning the rights saw an opportunity. It isn't uncommon, at least in Stephen's case, for film rights to be optioned even before a book has been released as the film agent has the book prior to publication and then shops it.

I don't have information at this time about what network will be broadcasting or when or I would have included that in the announcement.

No, it is not a dollar baby deal but I don't know what the other specifics of the option are. It's true that Amazon's Instant Video deal for Under the Dome was a major factor in its financial success but I have no idea if this will be repeated for Mr. Mercedes. There have been a lot of ideas that get talked about in the press that still haven't come to fruition--The Talisman, The Dark Tower, among others so I take that sort of information with a very large grain of salt.

The reason you won't see your idea about dollar babies is because of the restrictions I'd mentioned before about not allowing them to be distributed other than at film festivals because that would compromise Stephen's ability to sell the commercial film rights. Not to mention that Stephen doesn't write stories on demand or to spec so unless he already had a story written that could be set aside for that purpose, he wouldn't be interested.

 

[Rrty]

Thank you for that very informative reply.

I should clarify what I meant by the Mercedes deal being a dollar deal. I thought that King would sell things to Hollywood, on occasion, for a dollar (obviously against larger sums of money to come once the project was distributed). I could have sworn I read he did that for The Green Mile, but I may be wrong. I presume he no longer does that for the big stuff.

It amazes me what someone like King must make just from option money. That has to be a whole industry unto itself. What's useful about option money is it, in a sense, might be enough to pay for the overhead of his organization, or at least be a nice offsetting factor.

I find the part about the option buyers having to bring financing and distribution to the table fascinating. I would assume that means the network it will be on is known. And I assume the term option is technically correct for this stage of the process?

Has Netflix or Amazon made any overtures to work directly with King? I don't know if Hulu was a direct deal, but I would think those industry actors will be making a play for his material at some point. Since Netflix made a deal with Adam Sandler's company, I assume King will at some point be courted by the streaming service.

On the TV series for dollar babies: I do remember you saying that, although I would have to think there would be some sort of workaround on that. I think if full disclosure on that count was given upfront to rights-buyers that they wouldn't balk and would not be afraid of competing with smalltime filmmakers. After all, why can't two iterations, or three/four/etc., be made of the same story? Happens with reboots, remakes; even the TV series Hannibal shows that stories previously adapted for film can be retold in different arenas. I suppose doing it contemporaneously might be an issue.

I'm surprised you said King would not be willing to write a story if asked to by a studio. I would think something like a requested anthology film, or perhaps being asked to create a series, might be something he'd do if the deal was appropriate. And I'd also think he has a ton of story ideas on file that could easily be turned into treatments.

Thanks again for the reply, it gave a lot of information.

 

[Moderator]

The financial compensation varies from project to project depending on what makes the most sense, e.g. would an upfront amount be more lucrative than a percentage. I think that's pretty much how the industry works these days for many different aspects of it including actor compensation. The term dollar baby to me has a very specific definition and only applies to the not-for-profit films.

I don't know why it would seem strange that the option buyers would have to bring financing and distribution plans to the table. Before selling the rights, it would make sense that whomever he sells them to would have the wherewithal to see the project through but an actual network would not necessarily have to be on board at that point. When I say distribution plans, I mean in more general terms as in that it would be for theater release, straight to video, or as a television project. If a distributor is already on board, that certainly helps. Again, though, it's up to the rights buyer to handle that end of the deal, not Stephen. No more than when he sells his manuscript to a publisher, it would be expected that he provide the retailers where it would be sold.

Yes, he's been approached directly but I can't say by whom or for what projects as I don't feel I would be at liberty to do so.

To do a series as you've described there would have to be some sort of remuneration as I doubt very much anyone would want to do something on that scale as a not-for-profit venture. That would by definition make it a commercial project which takes it out of the dollar baby category. Yes, you would think an aspiring film maker's efforts wouldn't intimidate a major film maker and I doubt that it does but their argument is that it devalues their project because it is a remake and try to negotiate the option price down accordingly. I don't know exactly how it works with commercial remakes in the price negotiation for film rights. The only time Stephen has ever been involved with a remake of his own work was when he bought the rights back for The Shining. He also bought the rights to do a remake for Kingdom Hospital but I have no knowledge of the specifics of the amount he paid to acquire those.

All I can say is that in the time I've been here, he has rarely done one on spec and he has been approached more times than I can remember. I've had two or three anthology requests come through for him this week alone. The Kindle story deal only came about after they'd approached him and he happened to come up with a story after thinking about it but he did not agree to do it until he had the idea. There are exceptions, of course, but the story has to come first no matter what the deal proposal is. He reached the point in his career long ago that that isn't the deciding factor either for publication or film work. I don't think he's that interested in turning over his still unwritten ideas to someone else to finish because if they're good enough to stay in his memory, he may want to complete them himself some day.

 

[doowopgirl]

Rrty you sound a bit disgruntled. Why?

 

[Rrty]

Doowopgirl, I do? I honestly don't see where I gave that impression. Could you please show me what made you think that, only because I truthfully am stumped and am very curious about this.

 

[Rrty]

I probably misspoke when I mentioned how strange it was about the financing/distribution. I'll clarify a bit. I meant literally have a network or theaters lined up to showcase the material. What you are saying seems to be that a business model must be presented for how the project will make money. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is a subtle difference that is actually a big one -- put another way, the option period might lapse and King could then re-sell the option rights elsewhere. That's sort of why I was puzzled, because in a sense, although this might sound odd, perhaps the best outcome would be for a Hollywood player to sell many options over short periods of time (say, option-periods of six months to a year) and then hope each one fails until someone who could really bring in the big money on the project comes along. It's like when an investor sells a call option or a cash-secured put -- at least in the case of the former, but even oftentimes with the latter, if you can constantly get good premiums, you root for them to expire worthless so you can do it again. Maybe that analogy is wrong, but I've heard of people actually making income just being optioned and never produced (although I'm very sure that has to be rare, if not mostly a Hollywood urban legend, who knows; people in Hollywood may finagle options from their friends in the industry to keep Guild memberships, however, I've heard of that, too).

Thanks for that great information, Ms. Mod. I did not know he bought back the rights to The Shining...that is presumably how he was able to do the TV mini-series all those years ago. And I also didn't realize he was the one who purchased the rights to Kingdom Hospital. Of course, I assume he was able to turn around and negotiate enough on those projects to get those outlays effectively covered. Nevertheless, I did not think that's how those projects got their start.

King should someday consider funding a small production company and put Joe Hill and Owen King in charge of it. All three would probably be quite the moguls in the niche space of independent content distributed on multiple media.