Fair question, and I understand the curiosity, I do not take offense to it (and ultimate bean counter, believe me, I laughed with good humor!).
You've got to forgive me...I am a person who invests in stocks and has written, mostly as a hobby, financial articles (I've even touched on King once, but in another context). The focus is on Hollywood and its business models. I'm always curious about how money flows in Hollywood (or even how venture capital flows in Silicon Valley and beyond). For instance, if Wall Street knew the compensation structures for content, it could more easily value the equities backing the studios. Is Lions Gate undervalued/overvalued, as an example? That's hard to know, because how exactly are the movies they produce risk-mitigated (and Lions Gate is very big on that; their distribution architecture is downright Byzantine). I bring up Lions Gate purposely -- it distributed
Cell with a simultaneous theatrical/VOD methodology.
King himself has talked about money before. He mentioned, as an example, the whole paperback rights deal for
Carrie (remember the have-to-buy-Tabby-a-present thing upon the news?). He also revealed what he paid in taxes a couple years back (during a political argument), I think on the state level of where he lived. He even once mentioned -- although he was upset because a reporter asked him about money; nevertheless, for some reason, he ended up saying this) -- some details about how he may be do in any given year financially. Here is a link:
What Is Stephen King Trying To Prove? - The New York Times
Scroll to the paragraph that begins " But it is, many times over. Responding to an e-mail query about his finances, he wrote:"...
He even mentioned there what he got for
The Green Mile. And we all know about the dollar-options stuff (see, when I read years ago that King only took a dollar for
Christine, or one of the books, as an advance and that it was supposed to be for tax reasons, I become curious and wonder if it was for some other reason as well -- did taking a dollar create other opportunities with the publisher/etc. It's just my nature. I think he even once casually confirmed what he received for advances on books during the period when he switched to what I call the
Bag of Bones model.
Now, I'm going to say what King said in that Times article -- you may not believe me when I tell you this, but for some reason, don't ask me why, I like to know he is making money off these various projects and isn't giving too much away. I know, strange, but what can I say. I used to think King wasn't as generous as he may have claimed to be in interviews, but I actually nowadays believe that to be true -- I don't think he takes as much money as he could. If I were him I would have my agents concoct all kinds of schemes to increase my net worth (I know, I know, but -- the James Patterson model utterly fascinates me; so does the R.L. Stine model, because although there has never been confirmation of this, I think some observers have wondered if he uses ghostwriters; for the record, I am not stating that, Stine has not stated that, but there have been literally maybe two blog posts that claim this -- one author though, Tom Perrotta I believe, did say he wrote one of Stine's non-Goosebumps books). If King increased his cash flow, he actually could do more charitable endeavors, so that's one thing to consider.
I honestly wouldn't have started this thread except I happened to read that article and it made me think of King's comments about his Doubleday days and how they took a lot of rights, including movie rights (I think), etc. I know Bev has a lot of knowledge on this count, so considering the unique access to him on this very unique board, I thought I would ask. However, I note that he liked your post but did not like mine, so perhaps I will refrain from asking these money questions.
Finally, I will point out that, like Bev at one point, I have been trying to get a writing career going and have in fact made a little (very, very little, but actually notable from one angle) progress that actually makes me need to study up a bit on Hollywood deal-making, and not as a theoretical construct but as something now relevant for me. Because of all this, that is why I tend to ask about money and deals -- in summation, interest/fascination for an opaque subject plus some small bit of access.
Forgive all the writing...again, I will try to refrain! But please do check out that Times link and read that relevant paragraph. And please know I do not mind you asking the question. (One last thing: in this new age of Netflix, and now Disney, streaming, all of that as a backdrop makes me more inclined to fascination with all of this and who exactly is going to get the money -- the streaming businesses, talent, agents, VC's; it boggles the mind, but in a good way.)