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That seems common--books are optioned, then the project never gets out of the ground. Then the options are sold again for X number of years, and rinse and repeat.
May be urban legend, but the story is that 'Stranger In A Strange Land,' by Robert Heinlein has been optioned more than any other book, and earned the writer more from options than from book sales. It came out in 1961, and was last optioned by SyFy network in 2016. David Bowie tried to make it, and ended up taking elements of it in 'The Man Who Fell To earth.'
Stranger in a Strange Land was popular enough and written late enough in Heinlein's career that I'd be somewhat surprised if movie options truly earned him more than book sales (I mean, "stranger in a strange land" and "grok" both entered common parlance)--then again, it's possible Heinlein got a shit contract for that book, or there were some heavy-hitters optioning the movie for tons of money even if it never got made. He was savvy enough too that he might have jacked up the cost of optioning the book a lot if it was getting a lot of Hollywood nibbles. So maybe it's not urban legend.
I bet some sci-fi author out there knows if it's true or not.