Everything You Never Knew About Movie Novelizations

2021-12-15

Write a great book and you're a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you're a visionary. Turn a great film into a book...that's another story. Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings -- some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them -- but respected they are not. Instead, they're assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren't good enough to do anything else. But the people who writ...

Write a great book and you're a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you're a visionary. Turn a great film into a book...that's another story.

Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings -- some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them -- but respected they are not. Instead, they're assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren't good enough to do anything else. But the people who write them beg to differ.

Back in 2016, former OTM producer Jesse Brenneman went inside the world of novelizations; featuring authors Max Allan Collins, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Hand, and Lee Goldberg.

Songs:

"The Blue Danube Waltz" by Johann Strauss

"The Throne Room and End Title" by John Williams (from the film "Star Wars")

*Correction: In the piece it is stated that the Star Wars novelization begins, "Another time, another galaxy." In fact it begins, "Another galaxy, another time."

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