All of these film adaptations must be working wonders for the King of Horror, as we've learned today that he has placed fifth on a recent list (via Forbes) compiling the World’s Highest-Paid Authors in 2019.
Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid children’s series, ranks fourth with $20 million. Former First Lady Michelle Obama rounds out the top three, earning an estimated $36 million. Then James Patterson (The President Is Missing) is runner-up at number two with $70 million. And wouldn't you know it, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was the highest-paid author of 2019 with an estimated $92 million.
At fifth place, King pulled in a hefty sum of $17 million, which is very impressive, especially when taking into consideration that he's predominantly a horror writer.
Stephen King's latest novel, The Institute, was published back in September. It's currently being adapted as a limited series by the team behind "Mr. Mercedes".
Its official synopsis reads: In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don’t check out."
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
