'Get Shorty'

At what point did Elmore Leonard figure out that whatever he wrote was going to be turned into a movie?

Actually, it wasn't until Hombre was adapted for the screen starring Paul Newman in 1967 that he probably first saw the lucrative aspect to his writing, much of it starting in the western genre. Once that happened, it all started snowballing and he started bathing in Spanish doubloons.

Get Shorty was published in 1990 and five years later John Travolta and Rene Russo starred in the film adaptation. It's beyond his western days focusing on his crime novels and the character of Chilli Palmer, a rather low-life loan shark, who is sent to Los Angeles to "collect" on a guy that faked his death in a airplane crash and ran off to Las Vegas to gamble it all.

Instead, he puts the focus on his future in the film industry. He goes to collect on a gambling debt on a C-movie director and falls in love with his ex-wife, who is oddly attracted to Palmer the entire time. Like, lust at first sight.

Anyway, Palmer outsmarts everyone and winds up with the money, everyone else dead or in jail, the girl and a career in film. It's how life goes.