The Hollywood Novelization: Film As Literature or Literature As Film Promotion?

The Hollywood Novelization:
Film as Literature or Literature as Film Promotion?
Johannes Mahlknecht
University of Innsbruck, American Studies
Abstract Hollywood movie novelizations are novels based on mainstream films and

published about the time these films are released in theaters. The present article
explores the ambiguous status of this generally little-esteemed and frequently
ignored form of adaptation. On the one hand, novelizations are works of literature
that can be enjoyed without knowledge of the film they are based on; on the other,
they can be (and often are) seen as mere tools of film advertising. This latter aspect
becomes particularly evident when looking at the cover design of a novelization. It
invariably features the film’s artwork (the poster image, stills, and/or typography
used for promoting the film) and frequently highlights the film’s stars rather than the
book’s author. By analyzing a selection of book covers of novelized versions of recent
films and comparing the novelization of Terminator Salvation (Foster 2009b) with the
film (Terminator Salvation 2009, dir. McG) it is based on, the article traces and exam-
ines the frictions between the opposing forces—literature and film marketing—that
define the genre.
This article was written as part of the research project Framing Media: The Periphery of Fic-
tion and Film at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, funded by the Austrian Science Fund
(FWF) and headed by Mario Klarer. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Meir
Sternberg and the anonymous referees of Poetics Today for their many priceless suggestions
that helped improve this article.
Poetics Today 33:2 (Summer 2012) doi 10.1215/03335372-1586572
© 2012 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-pdf/33/2/137/308250/PT332_01Mahlknecht_Fpp.pdf

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138 Poetics Today 33:2
isaac You still reviewing Tolstoy?

mary No, no, I finished that two days ago. I’m on that novelization.
isaac What . . . what do you waste your time with a novelization for? Why?
mary Because it’s easy and it pays well.
isaac It’s like another contemporary American phenomenon that’s truly moronic.
The novelizations of movies. You’re much too brilliant for that.
—Manhattan (1979, dir. Woody Allen)
Introduction
Hollywood has often been criticized for putting particular weight on the
commercial rather than the aesthetic value of the films it produces. No
other film industry has proved as creative in developing efficient marketing
machinery that not only increases the public’s awareness of a film but also
generates additional sources of income. These sources are frequently cre-
ated through so-called tie-in products, which Robert Marich (2009: 309)
defines as “joint marketing efforts in which a film distributor partners with
a consumer-goods company to promote movies.” Hence licensing deals
transfer the rights to use elements of film property in film-related products
(see ibid.: 304). These deals between film and consumer-goods companies
result in the sale of such variegated items as The Matrix (1999, dir. Andy
Wachowski and Larry Wachowski) T-shirts, The Lord of the Rings (2001–3,
dir. Peter Jackson) jewelry, Shrek (2001, dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky
Jenson) plush toys, Star Wars (1977, dir. George Lucas) action figures, Ava-
tar (2009, dir. James Cameron) video games, and Toy Story (1995, dir. John
Lasseter) Happy Meals. Among these and many other1 tie-in products we
also find novelizations, works of fiction (usually paperback novels) based
on big-budget films whose publication ties in (more or less) with the release
of the film.2
Such adaptations of films (or at least their story lines) into novels have
existed for almost as long as films themselves.3 In the past three decades
they have become a regularly used tool for the promotion of many of
1. For a comprehensive list of (almost) all kinds of tie-ins, see Marich 2009: 125 ff.
2. The phenomenon of novelization is not exclusive to film. Popular American television
series, like The X Files (1993–2002, created by Chris Carter), Charmed (1998–2006, created
by Constance M. Burge), CSI Miami (2002–, created by Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn,
and Anthony E. Zuiker), are also frequently novelized. Although in many ways similar to
the novelization of feature films, television novelization warrants an article of its own and
will not be dealt with here.
3. The first American novelizations, which were actually short story versions of films, were
published in 1911 in monthly fan magazines, most prominently Motion Picture Story and Photo-
play. For more information about these early phenomena, see Mahlknecht (2011); Shail
(2008); and Singer (1993).

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Mahlknecht • Film as Literature or Literature as Film Promotion? 139
Hollywood’s major cinematic releases—a calculated means of maximizing

profits (see Kent and Gotler 2006: 94).4 Blockbusters like King Kong (2005,
dir. Peter Jackson), The Wolfman (2010, dir. Joe Johnston), and Cowboys and
Aliens (2011, dir. Jon Favreau) all have their novelistic alter egos.5 Although
we can describe the novelizations as literary works in their own right (in
the sense that no knowledge of the film is required to enjoy them), critics
generally dismiss them as routinely commissioned, worthless by-products
of the film whose release they accompany (see Queenan 2009).6 The nov-
elist Jonathan Coe, while admitting that he used to collect them, delivers
perhaps the most scathing wholesale condemnation of novelizations. He
describes the genre as “that bastard, misshapen offspring of the cinema
and the written word. [Novelizations are] execrably-written texts: cheap,
hastily-assembled adaptations of recent movies and TV series” (Coe
2005).7 (And as the epigraph to this article shows, intellectuals of thirty
years ago did not think much differently.) While praise is regularly heaped
on the opposite form of adaptation—films based on novels8—novels based
on films remain marginalized.
In scholarly circles the situation has long been similar. Only in recent
years has the phenomenon of novelizations drawn some attention. The
pioneering work is Randall D. Larson’s Films into Books: An Analytical Bib-
liography on Film Novelization (1995), part analysis and part a reference book
that also contains numerous interviews with leading American novelizers.
The most significant academic work on novelizations is that of Jan Baetens,
who published a series of articles on the subject (Baetens 2005, 2007,
4. Even if, as Roberta Kent and Joel Gotler (ibid.: 95) point out, the market for noveliza-
tions in the 2000s is not as strong as it once was.
5. The full writing credits of these books are Cowboys and Aliens, novelization by Joan D.
Vinge (2011) based on the screenplay by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof,
and Mark Fergus and on the screen story by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, and Steve Oede-
kerk (and although not mentioned on the cover, the film and the novelization are based on
the graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Fred Van Lente, Andrew
Foley, and Luciano Lima); King Kong, novelization by Christopher Golden (2005) based
on the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson and on a story by
Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace; The Wolfman, novelization by Jonathan Maberry
(2010) based on the screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self and on the screen-
play by Curt Siodmak for the original 1941 film version, The Wolf Man.
6. An autonomy that, as Jan Baetens (2008: 65 ff.) argues, is systematically undermined by
what he calls “external constraints.”
7. He does, however, point out the merits of one particular novelization, that of the film
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, dir. Billy Wilder) by Michael Hardwick and Mollie
Hardwick (1970).
8. Just think of Academy Award winners like No Country for Old Men (2007, dir. Joel Coen
and Ethan Coen), based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy (2005); The Silence of the Lambs
(1991, dir. Jonathan Demme), based on the novel by Thomas Harris (1988); and Slumdog Mil-
lionaire (2008, dir. Danny Boyle), based on the novel Q and A by Vikas Swarup (2005).

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2010) and, with Marc Lits, edited the collection La novellisation/Novelization

(Baetens and Lits 2004), with most articles written in French.9 The only
other examples are Thomas Van Parys’s (2009) brief history of the genre’s
development and Deborah Allison’s essay “Film/Print: Novelisations and
Capricorn One” (2007), in which she compares two novelizations of the same
film. The list is short, especially when compared with that of articles and
books written on film adaptations of literary materials.10 The way Linda
Hutcheon (2006: 38) treats novelization in her book, A Theory of Adapta-
tion, is symptomatic: she admits that the novelization industry “cannot be
ignored” but, except for a few casual mentions, ignores it nevertheless.
This discrepancy prompts the main question of this article: Why is it
that films based on novels can achieve undisputed classic status but novels
based on films apparently cannot (or at least have not as a matter of fact)?
While critics consider Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947)—to name
but one example—a classic film noir, its source novel, Daniel Mainwaring’s
Build My Gallows High (1946), is all but forgotten (see Leitch 2010: 63). Both
film and literature are firmly established as powerful means of aesthetic
expression that, as some argue, influence each other (see Schmitt 2007:
10–11). Why, then, do critics place one form of adaptation (films based on
books) on a higher aesthetic level than another (novels based on films)?11
And if novelizations really are as “execrably written” as Coe believes and
therefore deserve to be neglected, why are they?
As this article deals with ekphrastic (or, as we will see, seemingly ekphras-
tic) exchanges between the visual and the verbal, I will try to find reasons
for this “unjust” hierarchical ordering by examining both visuality and ver-
bality in the novelization. In the first part I will examine the cover design
of some recent novelizations. I will point out the degree to which pub-
lishers, by making extensive use of the film’s artwork (poster image, stars’
names, etc.), attempt to bring the novel close to the film, thus implicitly
downgrading whatever qualities the novelization may have as literature.
9. It should be emphasized that this article deals exclusively with US novelizations and their
marketing strategies. In other countries types of novelization have developed that function
quite differently. For detailed information about European and particularly French noveliza-
tions, see Baetens’s (2008) book La novellisation: Du film au roman.
10. Some publications on the subject in the past decade are Desmond and Hawkes 2006;
Hutcheon 2006; Leitch 2007; Naremore 2000; Stam and Raengo 2005; Welsh and Lev 2007;
and the journal Adaptation, published by Oxford University Press.
11. I do not know of a single novelization of a successful film whose popularity, let alone
critical reception, even remotely approximates that of the original. And it should also be
noted that novelizations of other media, like poetry or comic books, suffer a similar fate.
Both Marvel and DC, the most successful American publishers of comic books, offer novels
based on comic book characters (like Wolverine or Spiderman), but as one observer points
out, they “still can be viewed as a curiosity and almost alien concept” (Owenashi 2006).

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In the second part I will look at the way external factors surrounding
the production of novelizations are reflected in their content. By analyz-
ing Alan Dean Foster’s (2009b) novelization of Terminator Salvation (2009,
dir. McG, screenplay by John Brancato and Michael Ferris), I will show
to what degree the marketing purposes of novelizations exert pressure on
novelizers, via tight deadlines and limited creative freedom, to deliver a
product whose actual quality is of secondary importance. I will show how
the aesthetic potential that novelizations undoubtedly possess is system-
atically undermined by unfavorable conditions of production and distri-
bution that fuel rather than diminish the already widespread prejudices
against this genre.
The Business of the Cover
A movie novelization, as mentioned above, is the adaptation of a specific

film’s story line into novel form (see Baetens 2010: 51). To think of the
Hollywood novelization as a manifestation of ekphrasis, a written render-
ing of an (audio)visual original, however, can be misleading.12 It is seldom,
if ever, based on the film itself but rather on its screenplay.13 The novelizer
rarely gets to see even a rough cut of the film that the studio commissioned
him or her to novelize. Foster, one of the most prolific novelizers (as well as
a prolific writer of original novels), sums up the problem: “If I’m lucky I’ll
get production stills while the film is still in production. But what usually
happens is that by the time the rights are assigned, it’s a we-need-the-book
yesterday kind of deal” (quoted in Larson 1995: 141). Both the film and the
novelization thus rely on one and the same nonvisual source, the screen-
play, and can be seen as medially different interpretations, or “alternative
readings” (Allison 2007), of this linguistic original.
However, if novelizations are not strictly speaking manifestations of
ekphrasis, as they are seldom based on any concrete visual elements, they
may nevertheless appear so to the reading public, at least at first glance.
The cover of a novelization invariably features the artwork—that is, stills,
poster design, and/or typographical elements used in film marketing—
of the (now finished) film whose release the publication ties in with. A
look at the cover of any given novelization inevitably suggests the film
more than anything else. As Roberta Kent and Joel Gotler (2006: 93) point
12. In her essay “Pictorial Models and Narrative Ekphrasis,” Tamar Yacobi (1995: 599)
defines ekphrasis as “an umbrella term that subsumes various forms of rendering the visual
object in words.”
13. Baetens (2010: 51) describes novelizations as “the novelistic adaptation of an original film
or, more specifically, of the screenplay of this film.”

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out, “Essential to the movie tie-in [and this includes the novelization] is
the [publisher’s] acquisition of the movie logo (called artwork) and stills,
which must be acquired from the distributor.” These visual (but again non-
ekphrastic) elements are “essential” simply because, irrespective of the
quality of the writing, it is the corresponding film that will (almost) always
be considered the novelization’s main selling point. Hollywood noveliza-
tions never share equal status with the films they accompany, nor are they
meant to. If both critics and the public see novelizations as mere acces-
sories to the more important films, it is in large part due to the fact that
they are marketed as such. On the front cover of Foster’s novelization of
Terminator Salvation, for instance, we see the same image of the menacing
metal skull that features on various movie posters. Above the title (pre-
sented in the same style of lettering that appears on the film’s poster) we
read, “The official movie novelization.” The novelizer’s name is at the bot-
tom of the cover and is shown in relatively small letters, equal in size to
those of the screenwriters credited beneath it. Furthermore, the noveliza-
tion is based (apparently) not on the screenplay but “on the motion picture
written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris” (my emphasis). This delib-
erately misleading information indicates that the producers and publishers
prefer to give the public the impression that the book is based on the film
and not “merely” on the screenplay. The presence of the movie poster’s
billing block (i.e., the credits listing the major stars and the crew involved
in making the film) on the back cover further tightens the novelization’s
link to the film. Among the names mentioned there, however, few if any—
with the exception of the screenwriters and producers—were in any way
involved in the production of the novelization.
Some book covers have even stronger links to the film than the example
just mentioned with the consequence that the “presence” of the noveliza-
tion itself is diminished even further. On the front cover of William Kotz-
winkle’s (1982) novelization of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, dir. Steven
Spielberg, screenplay by Melissa Mathison), for instance, neither the
novelizer nor the screenwriter Mathison get top billing (see fig. 1). Above
the title (in a style matching the film’s poster) we read, in capital letters,
the director’s name, “A Steven Spielberg Film,” instead of the more accu-
rate “A William Kotzwinkle novelization.” Kotzwinkle’s name and that of
the screenwriter are presented in smaller, lowercase font, banished to the
bottom of the page. The cover of David Hagberg’s (2003) novelization of
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003, dir. Jonathan Mostow, screenplay by
John Brancato and Michael Ferris) is similar. At the top, in bold, capital
letters, the surname of its leading actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is printed

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Figure 1 Book cover of science-fiction novelization of E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial that

heavily advertises the film version.
almost three times larger than are those of the novelizer and screenwriters
(whom again we find at the cover’s bottom). In addition, the star’s face is
the novelization’s cover image.14
With these aggressive methods of advertising the film via the book, pub-
lishers and producers promote the impression that one is reading not a
novel but the film itself, as if it were possible to blur the inherent medial
difference between the two. The novelization thus offers what is often
described as one of its major attractions for readers: a repetition of the
pleasure experienced while watching the film. Hutcheon (2006: 9) states
14. Novelizations and especially short story versions of films published in fan magazines
have been advertised with stars’ names for as long as the concept of the movie star has
existed. The January 1936 issue of the monthly magazine Romantic Movie Stories, for instance,
promises “Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea—Fiction Story of their New Film ‘Splendour’”
and announces “Movie Stories Starring Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Sylvia Sidney,
John Boles, Joan Blondell, Cary Grant” (McLean 2003: 5). It seems illogical to think of real-
life actors as stars of a short story which in fact is only about characters the actors play in
the eponymous film, but that link is often established visually by adorning the pages of the
magazine and the story with stills from the film.

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that, in all forms of adaptations, repetition is seemingly as desired a fac-

tor as is variation. With novelization, repetition is arguably more important
than variation.15
From a sales perspective, the strategy of reducing novelizations to a mere
adjunct of the film—with little thought given to its potential for creative
extension or even reinterpretation—has proved effective. It should not sur-
prise us, however, if a more aesthetically demanding book lover dismisses
them after a glance at their covers. Novelizations’ increased presence on
the market, following the phenomenal success of David Seltzer’s (2006)
book version of The Omen (1976, dir. Richard Donner), adapted from his
own screenplay,16 is, as Ira Haupman (1981: 87) observes, “beginning to
make book stores look like miniature-poster galleries.” The only upside
to what Haupman (ibid.) regards as a lamentable trend is that “judging a
book by its cover is becoming easier than ever.”
Such easy judgment, however, is problematic. It might lead a careless
novelization hater to dismiss not only novelizations but also original novels.
Reprinting an original work as soon as its screen adaptation is released—
with a cover to match that of the film poster—is after all as much a rou-
tine as commissioning novelizations of original screenplays (see Kent and
Gotler 2006: 92).17 A recently adapted classic like Jane Austen’s (2005) Pride
and Prejudice (2005, dir. Joe Wright) will perhaps escape confusion (at sec-
ond glance at least) owing to the fame of both the novelist and the title.
With the film poster as the cover, however, original novels by lesser-known
authors may easily be mistaken for novelizations. An example is the film
Planet of the Apes (2001, dir. Tim Burton, screenplay by William Broyles Jr.,
Lawrence Konner, and Mark D. Rosenthal), whose release was accompa-
nied by two tie-in publications, a reprint of Pierre Boulle’s original novel
Planet of the Apes (2001 [1963]), on which the film is based, and the novel-
ization by William T. Quick (2001).18 Because both books feature the art-
15. Of course, even in novelizations the craving for a variation or an expansion of the
movie’s diegesis, a change within repetition, can be of interest (see the discussion of Termi-
nator Salvation below).
16. The book sold more than three million copies and yielded six-figure royalties, a sum
that had hitherto been unheard of in connection with novelizations (see Kent and Gotler
2006: 94–95). It was after this success that “the book-publishing world and moviemakers
recognized the increasing value of coordinating book sales with movie sales to their mutual
benefit” (ibid.: 95).
17. As a look at Peter Jewell’s (2008: 150) private collection of film fiction shows, this routine
was already in practice in the first decade of the twentieth century.
18. With perhaps the notable exception of Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, source novels of a
“readapted” novelization usually involve older works that are in the public domain. If the
author of an original novel that has been optioned by a film studio is still living and holds
the rights to the book, he or she hardly ever relinquishes them for a novelization (see Crabb

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work of the film (the novel uses a production still of a simian character;
the novelization uses the film poster), it takes more than a casual glance
to tell them apart. Such confusion may happen whenever both a reprint
of the original novel and the novelization of the film based on that novel
are published more or less simultaneously. A recent example of this dan-
ger is T. T. Sutherland’s (2010) novelization of the film Alice in Wonderland
(2010, dir. Tim Burton, screenplay by Linda Woolverton).19 To signal the
difference from Lewis Carroll’s original work (on pain of mistaking the
one for the other), the novelization title includes the name of the film’s
production company, Disney Alice in Wonderland.20 The title of Fred Saber-
hagen’s (1992) novelization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992, dir. Francis Ford
Coppola, screenplay by James V. Hart) is more confusing. It keeps Stoker’s
name above the title (see Gelder 1994: 90), thus raising the question why,
as happened with Pride and Prejudice, the publishers did not do away with
the novelization altogether and simply reissue Stoker’s original version as
a movie tie-in.
The practice of linking the poster of upcoming films with literary clas-
sics (as happened with Pride and Prejudice) is of course a calculated market-
ing strategy, but it is not necessarily as ethically deplorable as one might at
first assume (see fig. 2). What teacher of literature will not be delighted if a
student’s enthusiasm about the film Dorian Gray (2009, dir. Oliver Parker)
leads to the reading of Oscar Wilde’s original The Picture of Dorian Gray,
on which the film is based? The face of actor and heartthrob Ben Barnes
(McKee 2011) on the cover of the novel’s new edition (2009) should then be
accepted as only a minor drawback.
But even regarding novelizations of original screenplays we may detect
some educational value in the financial exploitation of (particularly) young
customers’ attraction to film-related covers. We may think of these covers
2005: 52). During the golden age of Hollywood, however, when short movie fictionizations
(i.e., short story versions of films published in fan magazines) enjoyed great popularity, short
story authors apparently did relinquish the rights. As Adrienne L. McLean (2003: 6) states,
“Many of the same [hard-boiled detective] stories appear, readapted from the films that
adapted the stories in the first place, in movie story magazines.”
19. Two further examples of novelizations based on films that are in turn based on liter-
ary classics are Kiki Thorpe’s (2002) novelization of Walt Disney’s animated feature Trea-
sure Planet (2002, dir. Ron Clements and John Musker, screenplay by Ron Clements, John
Musker, and Rob Edwards) based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s original novel Treasure Island
(1883); and Dan Senseney’s story version of the film adaptation (Jane Eyre 1943, dir. Robert
Stevenson, screenplay by John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, and Robert Stevenson) of Char-
lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre published in the fan magazine Photoplay (see McLean 2003: 8).
20. And we should also bear in mind another substantial difference, one that arguably jus-
tifies the existence of the novelization, that although the film’s title is (almost) identical to
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it is more a sequel to than an actual adaptation of
his classic.

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Figure 2 The book cover of a reprint edition of Austen’s classic novel Pride and Preju-
dice, featuring an image of the stars, Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, of the
movie adaptation.
as a bridge between the two media, one that lures teenagers who are more
used to visual narration (be it a film, television, or a video game) into
the world of reading in general, even if we agree that the texts read are
of inferior quality. As Kent and Gotler (2006: 97) put it, “Our society is
becoming less a printed-word society and more an image society, and pub-
lishers will be more dependent on those images to sell the word.” The
alluring paratextual link to a novelization’s cinematic counterpart can thus
provide a first step to an appreciation of literature. Some novelizers, like
Ed Naha, even see this as their most important mission: “We owe it to [the
young people] not only to satisfy their interest in the movie we are translat-
ing, but to inspire them to look towards larger, more bountiful fields of lit-
erature. . . . We are the Pied Pipers, here. It’s up to us to weave a tune that
will lead them into bigger and better things” (quoted in Larson 1995: 45).
Studios (especially Walt Disney) and publishers incidentally seem to
have caught on to this idea, publishing a wide range of so-called junior
novelizations. Usually issued in a large typeface and no more than 150
pages long, these target specifically children and/or teenagers. Examples

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are the junior novelizations of Jurassic Park III (2001, dir. Joe Johnston;
screenplay by Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, and Jim Taylor; noveliza-
tion by Scott Ciencin [2002]), Tangled (2010, dir. Nathan Greno and Byron
Howard, screenplay by Dan Fogelman, novelization by Irene Trimble
[2010]), and Thor (2011, dir. Kenneth Branagh; screenplay by Ashley
Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne; novelization by Elizabeth
Rudnick [2011]).21
But let us turn back to the issue of the negative effect of the covers on
novelizations. If the presence of the “miniature poster” (Haupman 1981:
87) on the book cover does not by itself put off potential readers more used
to canonical literature, many might be irritated by the number of authors
on it. Usually both the author of the novelization and the screenwriter(s)
are mentioned on the front cover and sometimes others still (as with Spiel-
berg’s name in the above example of Kotzwinkle’s E.T. novelization). The
credits on the front cover of Foster’s (2009a) novelization of Star Trek (2009,
dir. J. J. Abrams), for instance, read: “A novel by Alan Dean Foster writ-
ten by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman based upon ‘Star Trek’ created by
Gene Roddenberry.” Not only is there a total of four authors mentioned, it
is also unclear whether Foster or Orci and Kurtzman (who in fact are the
film’s screenwriters) wrote (or coauthored) the novel.
The number of contributors not only may be confusing, it also destroys
the apparently still widespread Romantic idea that a work of art, espe-
cially one of literature, must be attributed to a single author to be consid-
ered such. And novelizers themselves often share this idea. According to
Foster, “Novelizations occupy a lower niche. . . . Not because I invest that
much less work in them, but simply because they’re not all my material.
I am collaborating with someone else [i.e., the scriptwriter(s)]” (quoted in
21. The question regarding the didactic value of a novelization like Thor invites comparison
to another oft-maligned genre, namely, comics (Thor is based on the Marvel Comics series
that started in the early 1960s). The years from 1941 to 1971, for instance, saw the publication
of the Classics Illustrated series, which consisted of comic adaptations of literary master-
works, like James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (Kanter et al. 1997), Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (Wray and Boyette 1991), and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
(For more information on this fascinating topic, see William B. Jones’s [2001] Classics Illus-
trated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations.) If a novelization like Thor uses a child’s interest in
the film to awaken his or her interest in reading, Classics Illustrated uses his or her inter-
est in comic books to achieve the same (or at least a similar) effect. The phenomenon of
literature as comics persists today in the form of adaptations of classics by graphic novels.
Such is Nancy Butler’s 2009 adaptation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (with illustrations by
Hugo Petrus) and Amy Corzine’s 2008 adaptation of Brontë’s Jane Eyre (illustrations by Clive
Bryant, John M. Burns, and Terry Wiley). (Note that the relationship with literature was cru-
cial to Will Eisner, the artist who launched the graphic novel concept. For more information,
see Eisner 2008.) Whether such adaptations are an incentive for young people to read the
originals or an excuse for not reading them, however, remains an open question.

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Larson 1995: 144). Concerning our reception of what we consider art in

general, this poses an intriguing, albeit elusive, question. If we found out,
for instance, that somebody helped Edward Hopper paint his Nighthawks
(1942), would we appreciate the painting less? An analysis of novelization
reveals the extent to which our judgment of individual novelized texts (per-
haps more than any other genre) can be determined by our knowledge of
their context.
That novelizations occupy a “lower niche” not only compared with
original novels but also compared with the screenplays they are based on
is also reflected economically in the business deals among producer, pub-
lisher, screenwriter, and novelizer. Under the so-called Writers Guild of
America Basic Agreement, the screenwriter, as the originator of the story
to be novelized (that is, if the screenplay is not based on material previ-
ously published), makes considerably more profit on a novelization than
the novelizer working from the screenplay. The screenwriter usually gets
either 35 percent of the novelization’s adjusted gross receipts or $23,800,
while the novelizer, unless she or he has strong bargaining power, tends
to get only a flat fee of around $15,000 (see Kent and Gotler 2006: 94).
In addition, screenwriters always have the right to write the novelization
themselves if they are so inclined. According to Foster, however, this rarely
happens: “Once their contribution is completed, the screenwriters can
usually be found sitting on a beach in Cabo or Maui sipping pina coladas
and monitoring their stock portfolios on their iPhones. Seriously, they have
better (and far more lucrative)22 things to do than bother about a minor
ancillary right like the book” (quoted in Busch 2009).23
The discrepancy between the respective salaries of screenwriters and
22. In the words of the screenwriter William Goldman (2006: 61), “Film writing . . . not only
pays, it overpays.”
23. Novelizations done by the screenwriters do exist, however (apart from Seltzer’s The
Omen, already mentioned), e.g., Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack’s (1979) The Gauntlet
(film 1977, dir. Clint Eastwood); Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown’s (1989) The Adventures
of Baron Munchhausen (film 1988, dir. Terry Gilliam); and Christopher Wood’s (1979) Moon-
raker (film 1979, dir. Lewis Gilbert). In The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen the director shares
a credit for writing the novelization, a very rare occurrence. For the novelization (Spielberg
1977) of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (film 1977, dir. and screenplay by Spielberg), the
director even gets full credit; the book was in fact ghostwritten by Leslie Waller (see Haw-
tree 2007). Particularly noteworthy are the rare works of more critically renowned authors.
One example is Budd Schulberg’s (1979) Waterfront, which is perhaps more a reimagining
than a strict novelization of his own screenplay for Elia Kazan’s famous film On the Water-
front (1954). The novelistic reimagining deliberately shifts to a different protagonist and fea-
tures a radically altered ending (for a discussion, see Baer 2004: 193). In another case, Robert
Bolt (most famous for his play A Man for All Seasons [1990]) novelized The Mission (1986; film
1986, dir. Roland Joffé).

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novelizers seems to support the claim that novelizations are bad. If pay-
ment is not good, why should novelizers make the effort to do a better job
than is strictly required?
But novelizations enjoy a bad reputation among critics and academics
not so much because they are bad—who can really tell without actually
reading them?—but because of what they represent. The genre’s most con-
spicuous feature does not concern either form or content but the business
conditions that lead to its existence in the first place. As has already been
pointed out, a novelization is seen as merely one in a long list of merchan-
dise products strategically positioned in the marketplace to (a) raise the
public’s awareness of the main event, the film, and (b) increase sales of the
products that bear the names and/or images of the film and its stars (see
Marich 2009: 131 ff.). For a novelizer like Foster it may be disheartening
to think that in the eyes of his employers (at least the studio if not the pub-
lisher) he may have done a good job if a person simply walks into a book-
store and looks at the cover of the novelized book Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen (Foster 2009c) without opening it, let alone buying it. At least that
person is now aware of a film with such a title, and he or she may decide
to go see it. Novelizations are thus rare cases of literature in which, from
a business point of view, the paratext (title, cover image, and perhaps a
sticker saying “Now out in cinemas everywhere”)24 has as much impor-
tance as the text itself if not more. And if as critics we consider that pro-
ducers think of the novelization as a whole as no more than as a paratext
of the film it advertises, we may begin to understand just how little worth
is attributed to it as literature—both by producers and by novelizers. In the
words of the novelizer Orson Scott Card:
Can a novelization ever be a really good novel, in novelistic terms? . . . I imag-
ine that it would be possible—if the filmmaker had enough respect for the writ-
ten word to bring the novelist into his confidence and make him a collabo-
rator. . . . To most of them, the novelization is exactly as important as the
board game, the T-shirts, the action figures, and the coloring books. (Quoted
in Larson 1995: 44)
24. A novel’s paratext, to use the term coined by Gérard Genette, consists of a variety of
peripheral elements that surround the text, like preface, title, foreword, and cover. The
paratext is “more than a boundary or a sealed border . . . rather, a threshold, or . . . a ‘ves-
tibule’ that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back.
It is an ‘undefined zone’ between the inside and the outside, a zone without any hard and
fast boundary on either the inward side (turned toward the text) or the outward side (turned
toward the world’s discourse about the text), an edge, or, as Philippe Lejeune put it, ‘a fringe
of the printed text which in reality controls the whole reading of the text’” (Genette 1997:
1–2).

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It does not help matters that the writing of novelizations consists of work
done for hire. This automatically denies the genre access to an idealized
notion of literature according to which a work of art is only a work of art
if the motivation for creating it comes from the author himself or herself.
Thus even compared with lowbrow genre literature from authors like Dan
Brown or John Grisham (as well as some of the novelizers themselves),
novelizations enjoy little esteem. It seems that the way the Hollywood
industry has appropriated and commercialized the process of novelization
writing has put off freelance authors from trying to adapt a screenplay/
film into a novel. If they undertake such a project to weather a financial
strait (not unlikely in the writing business), they frequently use pen names,
lest their more ambitious work should suffer contamination. Christopher
Priest, to name one such author, used the pen name John Luther Novak
(1999) for his novelization of eXistenZ (1999, dir. and screenplay by David
Cronenberg; see Van Parys et al. 2004).
Another stubborn factor that operates against a wide acceptance of the
genre is the strong conviction apparently still rooted in society that, no
matter whether we are talking about sequels, remakes, spin-offs, or reinter-
pretations, the original is always best.25 In a discussion of Last Man Stand-
ing (1996, dir. Walter Hill), for instance, it is highly likely that someone
will say the film may be passable but cannot hold a candle to the clas-
sic film it was based on, A Fistful of Dollars (1964, dir. Sergio Leone). That
classic film in turn, another will interject, cannot compete with the film it
was based on, Yojimbo (1961, dir. Akira Kurosawa), which in turn was influ-
enced, according to Kurosawa himself, by the noir The Glass Key (1942, dir.
Stuart Heisler), an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s (1931) novel of the
same title. An awareness of the palimpsestic manifestations of narrative
art, whether film or literature, thus undermines the validity of “originality”
as a criterion of aesthetic judgment. Whether a wider public will accept
that works of art need not be “original” and whether it will consequently
become more open to the concept and practice of novelization is a differ-
ent matter.
In this context, the discrepancy between a film’s running time and the
time required to read a novelization may to some degree explain why films
(even if based on material previously published) can more easily gain criti-
cal acclaim than novelizations. Even if we believe that the original (i.e.,
novelistic) version is by nature the worthier one, we may still choose to
25. Perhaps not when we are talking about films based on novels. In such cases, it is gener-
ally acknowledged that the original can be bad indeed. Joseph O’Neill (2003), for instance,
argues that this is because filmmakers dare make the necessary changes to bad novels but
not to acclaimed literary works.

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watch a film adaptation for the simple reason that it usually takes less time
than the perusal of the novel it is based on. On the other hand, why should
we spend four hours or more reading a novelization if it is a pale image of
the original film anyway and if watching the superior original takes only
two hours? In today’s society we may think time in general is short and the
entertainments offered on the market countless. In this respect, unless one
is a devoted fan of the film, novelizations just seem not worth the trouble.
Compared with cinematic adaptations of novels or plays, novelizations’
chances of finding a readership are thus hampered by the tempo inherent
in the medium.
Considering all these negative influences on the academic reception of
novelizations, it is hardly surprising that they are almost never reprinted.
Since novelizations are so closely linked to the film’s cinematic release,
once a film’s run in theaters is over the novelization’s duty has been ful-
filled. And if a reprint does occur, it usually coincides with the release of a
film sequel, indicating the hopes of publishers that the extended life of the
original film may help reinvigorate sales of an otherwise obsolete novel-
ization. The release of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull (2008), for instance, was accompanied by a publication of noveliza-
tions of all three previous installments of the Indy franchise.
We must not assume, however, that a novelization’s brief existence in
bookstores automatically reflects its inferior quality (although it may be a
contributing factor). The problem that novelizations face is, again, their
direct relation to the films they accompany and the extent to which their
commercial function is thus made evident. Since the dominant marketing
strategy invests such efforts in linking novelizations to cinematic events,
they are denied the possibility to develop lives of their own. Their lack of
independence from the films is thus arguably one of the genre’s biggest
disadvantages.
One possible way of diminishing prejudices against the genre of noveliza-
tion therefore lies in increasing the distance between the book and the film
it adapts. A notable example which does not fit into the dominant market-
ing strategy employed by the major studios and publishing houses is Dave
Eggers’s (2009) book The Wild Things. Its visual presentation in terms of
cover design already appears to make it more eligible for a study as a novel
and not as a novelization. Even though it was published around the time
the film version, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are (2009), was released
in cinemas, its front cover omits all explicit connections between them. The
slightly different title distinguishes the work from Maurice Sendak’s (1988
[1963]) book Where the Wild Things Are, on which the film is based, but it
can also be seen as a deliberate choice to distance the novelization from

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Figure 3 The book cover of the British edition of Dave Eggers’s The Wild Things. The
cover deliberately veils, in both writing and image design, all ties to the film.
Jonze’s film version too. (It should also be noted that—unlike most original
works—Sendak’s book is not a novel but a picture book, which strengthens
the claims of Eggers’s work to novelistic status.) Moreover, unlike the vari-
ous book covers discussed earlier in this article, that of The Wild Things fea-
tures only Eggers’s name without any reference to other parties involved.
(That reference is only made on the half title page, reading, “A novel by
Dave Eggers adapted from the illustrated book Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak and based on the screenplay Where the Wild Things Are,
co-written by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze.”) It also features no poster
image, artwork, or typography from the film and no images of actors; the
cover image is evidently designed specifically for the novelization (see fig. 3;
for comparison to the film’s artwork, see the “Where the Wild Things Are”
poster). Only the back cover explicitly mentions the film in small letters,
stating: “A companion piece to the major movie Where the Wild Things Are.”
The word “novelization,” however, is never used—not even on the back
cover—probably to avoid unfavorable associations with the much-maligned
genre that The Wild Things undoubtedly belongs to. (In an interview Eggers
himself casually refers to the book as a novelization; see Goedhart 2007.)

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Whether or not The Wild Things will join the ranks of Eggers’s critically
acclaimed memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), remains
to be seen.26 The example shows, however, that some publishers (in this
case, Penguin) have recognized at least the potential of novelizations for suc-
cess as works of literature in their own right.
An analysis of the cover designs of novelizations, as these paragraphs
have shown, provides ample insight into the workings of the genre as an
element of marketing. What follows is an analysis of the novelization’s
actual text, which highlights different aspects of production—both its own
and that of the film it adapts.
Holes in the Plot
In the early days of the American movie novelization (about 1910–15), the
genre mostly appeared in the form of short story versions of popular movie
serials and can be seen as a tool that helped a public still unaccustomed to
cinematic storytelling understand better the films’ plots (see Singer 1993:
495). This early role may be another reason, besides the unfavorable busi-
ness context discussed above, for the decline in the prestige of the noveliza-
tion in later times (especially today, when its reputation is arguably lower
than ever before). With the public rapidly growing sophisticated regard-
ing the new way of (audio)visual narration, the explanatory functions per-
formed by the written versions apparently became obsolete. On closer
scrutiny, however, we find them to be still operative, albeit on a smaller
scale. The medium of the novel enables the novelizer to eliminate possible
illogicalities or plot holes encountered in the script: such holes can arise
either from the film’s restricted possibilities of explanation—owing to its
limited running time (and its problems with rendering inner life)—from
sloppy screenwriting, or from both. In the hands of a skilled novelizer,
then, a screenplay can assume its ultimate, superior incarnation, being
recast into novel form and thus attractively adapted for mass consump-
tion. As Foster succinctly states: “I try to remain as true to the original film
as possible, without making an idiot of myself. . . . I will not write about
people walking around in space without space suits and stuff like that”
(quoted in Larson 1995: 143).27
26. It should be noted that Eggers is a particularly interesting candidate for pioneering a
“new breed” of Hollywood novelization, as he specializes in offbeat literary projects and
genres. The literary quarterly McSweeney’s, of which he is the editor, especially shows a pen-
chant for literary experimentation (see Scott 2005). His novelization experiment can be seen
as a direct consequence of his earlier work in other genres.
27. Foster himself considers the screenplay the “rough draft” of his novelization (see Wil-
liams 2009).

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What follows are two examples from Foster’s (2009b) own Terminator Sal-
vation, in which he smoothed out some of the film’s inconsistencies, or at
least implausibilities, by adding explanatory passages.28 The film is set in
a postapocalyptic future, fifteen years after the machines, now self-aware
and at war with all humans, have killed most of the world’s population in
a gigantic nuclear assault initiated by the computer network Skynet. In
this world (at 29:30 minutes into the film) we see the protagonist Marcus
Wright (Sam Worthington) attempting to repair a car with which he and
his two companions eventually escape from the ruined city of Los Ange-
les. This makes us wonder how it was possible for him to fix a car so easily
and, more importantly, where he found the necessary fuel considering that
no car, let alone gas station, has been used for over a decade. In the book,
however, there is a lengthy passage describing the effort it took for Marcus
to assemble parts from derelict cars, put them in a heap (that we do not see
in the film), and pick out the sound ones (ibid.: 85–87). Toward the end of
the passage Foster added this explanatory dialogue between Marcus and
his new acquaintance Kyle Reese (in the film played by Anton Yelchin):
kyle You get it working?
(Wright spoke without taking his head out from under the hood.)
wright Almost. Won’t know ’till I try. Parts seem to work okay separately. Next
we’ll see how well they work together. At least the gas in the tank hasn’t
turned to varnish. (He indicated the assembled wrecks.) Managed to siphon
enough to fill her up. (Ibid.: 87)
Similarly, during the final third of the film we may wonder at how easily
John Connor (Christian Bale), the future leader of the human resistance
against the machines, marches into the enemy headquarters without any
Terminator sentinels around to stop him. Again, the novelization offers
an explanation: “Out here, on the bridge that now ran to nowhere, there
were no humans. There being no humans, there was no reason for Skynet
to waste resources on patrols” (ibid.: 235). And more explanation follows
later in a passage that feels like the voice of the novelizer himself as he pon-
28. We have to bear in mind that the novelization is based not on the actual film but on the
screenplay and not even the final draft of it (see the online interview with Alan Dean Foster
at Williams 2009). A direct comparison between the film and the novelization is therefore
problematic (at least from an academic viewpoint), since we cannot be sure what kind of
material the novelizer had access to while writing the book. A flaw we encounter in the film
may not have been in the script but may have occurred during the filming or editing process.
As Allison (2007) states, “It is not unusual for [a novelization] to adapt an older version of
the script than the one that was actually shot, thus rendering a single definitive script source
elusive if not downright illusory.” Nevertheless, the point drawn from a comparison between
film and novelization (i.e., the extent to which novelizers may eliminate the inaccuracies
they encounter in their source material) remains the same.

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ders the question that the script he is adapting—as well as the film—leaves
frustratingly unanswered:
Unlike a comparable human fortress, the deeper Connor pushed into Skynet
Central, the fewer patrols he encountered. From a machine standpoint, it made
sense. Assuming nothing could get past the massive outer fortifications, there
was no reason to waste resources looking for non-existent infiltrators. . . .
At first he wondered at how little machine activity he encountered. The more
he pondered the absence, however, the more sense it made. You just had to
think like a machine. Resources were allocated to fighting humans and building
new facilities. Except for occasional maintenance, once a facility or component
had been completed and put into operation, it could be allowed to carry on by
itself, performing its programmed functions.
The result was an eerie absence of activity. Lights and automata hummed all
around him. Since none were designed or had the capability to independently
detect intruders, he continued to be ignored. (Ibid.: 241–42)
Such an extensive (verbal) explanation that helps maintain a logic of conti-

nuity would be difficult to parallel in the film version—especially when we
consider that it is an action film—and the medium must therefore bear the
added burden of having to maintain visual continuity. Consequently, when
it comes to maintaining an illusion of reality-like authenticity, film would
appear to be more liable than literature to make mistakes. What in a novel
set in any time period may be described simply as a “gun” the film must show
as a particular model of a gun that was in use during the time period in
question. Likewise, a film must take care to maintain continuity between
shots. As a look at the “goofs” section on the Internet Movie Database
(IMDb) shows, there is hardly a film that does not betray continuity errors.
For Terminator Salvation, the IMDb lists nineteen such mistakes, ranging
from a zipper on Connor’s collar that is zipped in one shot and inexpli-
cably unzipped in the next to the degree of damage suffered by Marcus’s
body changing between cuts. Watching the film, however, there is little
time to notice these mistakes. Similarly, it is likely that the plot problems
concerning car repair and Terminator activity discussed above will also go
unnoticed by many viewers if not most. Due to its preset running time—as
against literature’s flexible reading time—a film makes it less easy for us to
consider every possible inconsistency. Inversely, its restricted running time
does not allow a film to explain all problematic details, a luxury that is left
to the novel format.29
29. A particularly interesting case of a novelization that deals with difficult plot elements
is Peter Lerangis’s (2000) M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” (The Sixth Sense 1999, dir.
M. Night Shyamalan). In its final section the book features an interview with the director

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In the novelization of Terminator Salvation there are accordingly many

more references to Marcus Wright’s mysterious and violent past than
would be sensible to include in the film version. The novel can allude to or
describe a character’s personality and past life more frequently and more
explicitly without running the risk of slowing down the narrative (fre-
quent flashbacks or voice-over narrations might irritate an audience, espe-
cially in an action film). In the Terminator Salvation film the few (and very
brief ) pieces of information that reveal to us the crimes Marcus committed
before his execution and rebirth as a semi-Terminator after the apocalypse
arise through dialogue. Throughout most of the first half of the novel-
ization, however, the information is presented much more often by way
of an authorial narrator. Short sentences like “Marcus Wright had never
been a believer in fairy tales. At least not the ones with happy endings”
(Foster 2009b: 74) or “His fingers were tough and strong, but they were
also capable of more delicate work. In their time they had done plenty
of damage” (ibid.: 74–75) are casually inserted either in a dialogue scene
or between plot events whenever they appear suitable. As these examples
show, a novelizer, while restricted in terms of the events to be novelized
(even as part of the contractual agreement; see Kent and Gotler 2006:
93 ff.), can lend more depth to a character’s personality and/or motivation
than found in the original screenplay. Even in a rigorously faithful novel-
ization, then, there is room for creative work on the part of the novelizer.
As Foster states: “If you don’t put at least 40 to 60 percent original material
into the book, then you’re cheating the reader. Anybody can sit down and
simply transcribe a screenplay into prose form. I don’t look at it as a work
of transcription; I look on it as a collaboration. The places where you can
really expand are in descriptions of action and particularly in the charac-
ters” (quoted in Larson 1995: 143).
Foster mentions that “40 to 60 percent” relates more to the details than
to massive changes in the overall narrative. According to Robert Bloch,
himself a novelizer, the agreed rule is that “while films can widely and
wildly deviate from previously-published-and-purchased novels, a novel-
ization cannot supersede a screenplay in terms of content” (quoted in
Larson 1995: 44). Any major discrepancies that we encounter are likely
to have occurred by accident rather than by the novelizer’s choice. Since
screenplays are often revised or even rewritten a short time before shoot-
ing starts (and even during shooting), the novelizer does not always have an
up-to-date story line at his or her disposal. Concerning the reliability of the
who, in typical question and answer style, solves all the cognitive problems encountered by
the movie’s spectators.

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source a novelizer has to work with, Foster notes that “no matter how much
material you get, and it’s usually very skimpy; [sic] you always crave more.
You hope when you describe a character as being six-foot-two with eyes of
blue that he’s not being played by Rosel George Brown or somebody like
that” (quoted in Larson 1995: 143) (note: Brown was an author of science
fiction novels, presumably short and not blue-eyed).
In the case of Terminator Salvation, the screenplay underwent substan-
tial alterations before the film went into production. Foster accordingly
rewrote large parts of the novelization after finding out that the shooting
script differed greatly from the screenplay that the studio had originally
given him (see Busch 2009). And yet, despite these changes, the noveliza-
tion’s final version still has a radically different ending from the finished
film, because the studio was so secretive about the ending it was going to
use that it did not inform even the novelizer about it (see Williams 2009).
Left on his own, Foster “came up with a fairly clever ending, that serves
as an ending to the book and to the story, but at the same time, doesn’t
contradict the actual ending that follows in the film” (ibid.). Compare the
two versions. In the film’s ending, after Marcus Wright and John Connor
have successfully blown up Skynet Central, Wright sacrifices his life (in
donating his heart) to save that of Connor, who had been gravely injured
by a Terminator. In the book both survive, escaping the explosion rela-
tively unharmed.30
The example of Terminator Salvation shows what may be gained from
comparisons between film and novelization in terms of more or less inten-
tional plot differences. They not only “provide fascinating insights into the
film’s production history, revealing other paths that the film might well
have taken” (Allison 2007, writing about different novelizations of the film
Capricorn One [1978, dir. Peter Hyams]), but can also throw light on some
aspects of studio politics. The great efforts studios make to keep plot details
secret prior to a film’s release31 seem at odds with the fact that noveliza-
30. The book, unlike the film, also suggests that one of the prisoners that escaped with
Wright and Connor might actually be a Terminator infiltrated among humans, thus leaving
the happy ending slightly ambivalent.
31. It is common practice for all cast and crew members to sign a so-called nondisclosure
agreement prohibiting the revelation of details to the press. An incident during the shooting
of Spielberg’s film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) shows the lengths to
which filmmakers go to protect their material. When Tyler Nelson, an extra working on the
film, disclosed a number of (minor) plot points to his local newspaper, the Edmond Sun (for
the article, see Coburn 2007), Spielberg threatened to cut all scenes featuring him from the
finished film, and a spokesperson also said, “Who knows if he’s ever going to work in this
town [Hollywood] again” (see WENN 2007). The IMDb does not list Nelson as one of the
cast members of the film, and he has not been attached to any other project since.

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tions—which ideally contain all these details and more—are often pub-
lished up to a month before a film’s release.32 The example of Terminator
Salvation indicates one way for studios to resolve the dilemma. It shows that
even if one reads the novelization before the film is out in cinemas—the
Terminator Salvation novelization was published sixteen days before the film
was released—one cannot be sure whether or not the plot details match.33
At least some element of surprise can thus be retained.
Another reason that studios do not seem to fear that the disclosure of
plot elements by novelizations may have a negative effect on ticket sales
could be the genre’s low prestige. Since a newly published novelization is
not widely (if at all) discussed in the media, there is little danger that its
reviews will spoil the surprise (to the studio’s loss) for any potential viewer
of the film. It seems therefore not unlikely that studios have an interest in
keeping the profile of novelizations low and in ensuring that they do not
excel in terms of literary quality.34 Even if a novelization is a best seller—
which in itself serves the studio’s and of course the publisher’s interests—
it would be fatal if the quality of the book reduced the readers’ interest
in watching the film. As Haupman (1981: 87) observes: “When I saw the
paperback version of The Empire Strikes Back [by Donald F. Glut (1985);
film dir. Irvin Kershner (1980)] sell out at my local supermarket before the
movie had even opened, I wondered if anybody who read the book first
would feel that the movie didn’t live up to it. The book would then, pre-
sumably, be a failure to its publishers.”
The producers’ apparent lack of interest in quality work is reflected
in the time restriction imposed on novelizers. This powerful factor helps
32. The exact interval between the release of the film and the publication of the noveliza-
tion can vary. Sometimes the novelization reaches bookstores a short time after the film
comes out, sometimes a short time before. A few examples of release and publication dates
in the United States are Cowboys and Aliens, film July 29, 2011, novelization August 2, 2011;
King Kong, film December 5, 2005, novelization December 13, 2005; and Transformers: Dark of
the Moon, film June 28, 2011, novelization May 24, 2011. James Luceno’s (2008) novelization
of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (based on the story by George Lucas and
Jeff Nathanson and the screenplay by David Koepp) came out on the same day as the film,
May 22, 2008. (I retrieved the release and publication dates from the IMDb and Amazon
.com, respectively.)
33. Compare Haupman (1981: 87): “I’m sure there are people who buy Avery Corman’s
novel Kramer vs. Kramer [1977; film 1979, dir. Robert Benton] and are startled to find material
in it that wasn’t in the movie. What kind of screw-up, they must wonder, let the book retain
scenes that ended up on the cutting-room floor? Those leisure-time conglomerates better
get their act together.”
34. Ben Singer (1993: 495) lists this as one reason why in the 1910s, after a brief period of
popularity, short movie fictionizations disappeared from the Sunday editions of highbrow
newspapers like the Chicago Sun Tribune: “Some producers and exhibitors felt that, because
they gave away the story, the fictionizations . . . decreased viewer interest and ticket sales.”

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minimize the “risk” of novelizations being better than their cinematic

counterparts.35 While the novel format, as we have seen, gives novelizers
the chance to improve on details and eliminate plot inconsistencies, the
generally tight deadlines for handing in the manuscripts are liable to cause
sloppiness. The average time that an author is allowed to invest in a novel-
ization ranges between two or three weeks and two months.36 We may
thus attribute the considerable number of typing errors in Terminator Salva-
tion (e.g., “Ashdown had no difficult [sic] communicating his fury” [Foster
2009b: 216]) to sheer sloppiness on the author’s or the editor’s own part,
but the intense time pressure is likely to account at least for part of the
deficiencies.
Furthermore, the novelization’s orthographic and syntactic mistakes
and some awkward expressions, like “in his hands the complete explosive
package came together like a pizza in Naples” (ibid.: 29), can be regarded
as the written equivalent of the film’s visual errors of continuity. Just as a
tight writing schedule may result in the former, so may a tight shooting
schedule cause the latter.
These tight deadlines imposed on novelizers are part of what Baetens
(2010: 65 ff.) thinks of as external constraints related to organizational
structure. He adds that novelization writing also operates under further
external constraints. One is the law (a movie novelization is bound to the
chain of events dramatized in its cinematic source by a contract signed
among the production company, the publishing house, the screenwriter,
and the novelizer [see Kent and Gotler 2006: 93]); the other is the market
(whereby the novelizer must avoid complicated literary devices in order
not to alienate an unsophisticated target audience).
It is therefore certainly legitimate to consider novelization as “multi-
ply constrained writing” (Baetens 2010: 51). Still, a final example from the
novelization of Terminator Salvation shows that there is one aspect in which
the genre actually suffers from fewer constraints than film. To avoid the
dreaded R rating37 by the Motion Picture Association of America, the film
35. There is, however, one more reason besides lack of prestige or high quality why pro-
ducers need not be afraid of a novelization competing with the film it adapts. If a studio
agrees to have the novelization in print before the release of the movie, it is also because con-
temporary Hollywood movies rely to a large extent on what cannot be described in words:
special effects. Even if the novelization gives the complete plot away, it won’t be able to
reproduce the spectacle that modern audiences crave in this kind of movie.
36. The novelizer Raymond Benson, for instance, states, “I normally had about six to eight
weeks to write a novelization, whereas I had a whole year for an original [novel]” (quoted
in Cox 2004).
37. “R” (“Restricted”) means that “Children under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or
Adult Guardian” (Motion Picture Association of America 2011).

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version has to tone down the depiction of violence.38 The novelization is

definitely less restricted, as the following excerpt shows: “Frantic kicking
and screaming didn’t save the surviving gunner. As his desperate shots
spanged harmless off the armored intruders, one bit through his right leg.
Blood spurted in all directions. A sharp crunching sound filled the cabin as
metal teeth began to munch their way through bone” (Foster 2009b: 202).
Among the few licenses he or she enjoys, the novelizer here is free to let
his or her imagination run wild, because the verbal narration of a violent
scene, it would appear, is considered less harmful to teenagers than the
staging of one before the viewer’s eyes.
Conclusion
In this article I looked at two aspects of contemporary Hollywood movie

novelization: its economic exploitation (as manifested in the cover design)
and its intermedial relation to the film it adapts. These analyses high-
light the opposition between what novelizations are (i.e., novels based on
films) and what companies, authors, and even readers consider them to
be, namely, film ads. Even if it is perfectly possible (if somewhat unlikely)
for people to read a novelization without caring about the film, the text’s
presentation and positioning on the market renders it virtually impossible
(with the notable exception of a book like The Wild Things) to ignore the exis-
tence of the film. The overwhelming dominance of film-related commercial
factors generally has a radical effect on the novelization. These forces so
determine its production, design, and distribution that a curious shift in
status results: what could be a hierarchically equal companion piece to the
film, a text, becomes a subordinate adjunct, a paratext.
This is not to say that the frequently poor quality of the writing is not
to blame too. As Larson (1995: 38) puts it, “Many novelizations are indeed
cranked out like sausage from a meat grinder.” But even if we agree, there
is no reason, given more favorable circumstances, they cannot rise above
and beyond the screenplay/film they adapt. There are, after all, a great
many poor original novels on the market, and yet the genre as a whole
enjoys vast critical acceptance.
An aesthetic liberation of the Hollywood novelization requires skilled
authors and a relaxation of the many external constraints imposed on them.
The future of the novelization might also depend on the success of forms
outside Hollywood’s sphere of influence (see Baetens 2008): the more suc-
38. Terminator Salvation is rated PG-13. “PG” (“Parental Guidance”) means that “Parents
[Are] Strongly Cautioned. Some Material May Be Inappropriate for Children Under 13”
(ibid.).

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cessful non-Hollywood novelizations there are, the easier it should become

for the Hollywood novelization to become something other than what
it is today. Finally, a decisive reduction of the many explicit references
(visual and verbal) to the film on the cover of the novelization is called for.
Eggers’s The Wild Things has shown the way; it remains to be seen whether
others will follow. As Baetens (2005: 43) rightly observes, it took time and
effort to make critics and academics begin at last to take comic books seri-
ously. Perhaps the time will come for the novelization in turn.
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The Hollywood Novelization: Film As Literature or Literature As Film Promotion?

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Film as Literature or Literature as Film Promotion?

Abstract Hollywood movie novelizations are novels based on mainstream films and

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isaac You still reviewing Tolstoy?

mary Because it’s easy and it pays well.

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Hollywood’s major cinematic releases—a calculated means of maximizing

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2010) and, with Marc Lits, edited the collection La novellisation/Novelization

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The Business of the Cover

A movie novelization, as mentioned above, is the adaptation of a specific

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Figure 1 Book cover of science-­fiction novelization of E. T.: The Extra-­Terrestrial that

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that, in all forms of adaptations, repetition is seemingly as desired a fac-

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Larson 1995: 144). Concerning our reception of what we consider art in

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Holes in the Plot

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Such an extensive (verbal) explanation that helps maintain a logic of conti-

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In the novelization of Terminator Salvation there are accordingly many

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minimize the “risk” of novelizations being better than their cinematic

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version has to tone down the depiction of violence.38 The novelization is

In this article I looked at two aspects of contemporary Hollywood movie

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cessful non-­Hollywood novelizations there are, the easier it should become

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The Lord of the Rings

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Van Parys, Thomas

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Figure 1 Book cover of science-fiction novelization of E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial that

cessful non-Hollywood novelizations there are, the easier it should become