Many, many movies are based on published novels. When the movie comes out, the novel is often re-released with a new cover; usually with the lead actor or the movie poster. But it’s the same book that was originally published, no matter how the movie changes it (which is a good thing). But what if someone wanted to read a novelized version of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, or Matt Damon’s Bourne movies. Are novels like that ever published?
I think that’s what happened with Total Recall. The movie was based on a short story by Phillip K. Dick, but the novelization of the film was written by Piers Anthony.
I know what you mean. I would love to read a novelization of the movie Let Me In. Almost everything I have read about the book it is based on is a turn off for me.
Absolutely. In fact, there was a novelization of a Lord of the Rings movie – not the Jackson one, but the Bakshi one. I received a copy as a child. It was geared towards younger readers and was illustrated with film stills, but was still pretty text-heavy.
I had a similar item, based on The Wizard of Oz.
Huh. Now I feel like seeing the movie - I read the book and I wonder what the differences are. Does anyone know?
Did you see the Swedish movie or the Hollywood one? I’d bet there are more differences in from the book in the Hollywood movie.
I saw “Let Me In”, which is the Hammer one. Hammer is from the UK, so I don;t see the Hollywood connection.
Differences I am aware of:
In “Let Me In” the character Eli is changed to Abby, and is a girl.
Her guardian is a man currently in his 50’s. She met him when he was a child. They fell in love and as he grew up, he did her killings for her. They are growing apart because even though Abby is around 200 years old, she still has the mind of a child, and he is an adult. Plus he is getting tired of killing and being on the run.
Owen is the boy she meets and falls in love with. I gather his story is pretty much the same.
There are most definitely many more differences. But these are the ones I know about that I can think of off the top of my head.
I thought the poster child for this was Arthur C Clarke and The Sentinel/2001
You may be talking about the Photonovel/Fotonovel of Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings which I have. It was entirely illustrated with film stills and most of the dialogue was incorporated within.
The James Bond Movies The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker were both rewritten as novelisations by Christopher Wood since their plots differed so much from the original
There is a children’s novel of Jurassic Park that came out after the movie
I would definitely skip the book.
[spoiler]Besides the whole “Eli/Abby is a dude!” thing there’s the fact that The Man isn’t someone who loves Abby, but a pedophile who has rationalized than it’s not wrong to want to stick his dick in her because she’s really 200 years old.
It’s fucked up and I couldn’t finish it.[/spoiler]
I think this may be a unique example in which the screenplay and novel were developed simultaneously. (See The Lost Worlds of 2001) In fact, Arthur C. Clarke jokingly remarked that 2001 should have been " A film by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick."
Did you get to the part where he receives a blowjob from a toothless boy prostitute in a stall of a public bathroom? Classy stuff.
I believe there was a movie novelization of “Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein” which I always found a bit funny. There were even people that maintained that this version stayed closer to the original novel, but apparently, not close enough.
Yeah, back when that happened I read a letter to the editor of an online magazine which was very irate that the reviewer of the movie had credited the idea to Phil Dick, when Anthony had written the book - the editor was very gentle in reply
Back when Asimov wrote the novelization for Fantastic Voyage, he wrote it so fast that the novelization came out before the movie, leading people to believe that the movie was based on the book, and not vice versa.
Had anyone made a movie using as source material the novelization of a movie that was based on a book? 
Unfortunately, yes.
[spoiler]But if I remember right, he doesn’t actually go through with it. Which then leads to the revelation that that’s why he’s with Eli. Squick.
It also made me wonder what the fuck is up with Sweden. Between this and the Stieg Larsson trilogy, it seems like there’s pedophiles/rapists/sexual deviants everywhere. “The Man” in the Let Me In novel just looks a little shifty and all of a sudden a pimp is offering him not just a boy but asking him “how old?” Double fucking squick, man.[/spoiler]
And then Asimov went on to re-write it (published as Fantastic Voyage II, though it’s not really a sequel), with the same basic plot but as his own story, to address some of the issues he saw with the original.
Yeah, not a bad book for late Asimov.
Such novelizations are published all the time:
The Island of Doctor Moreau, to coincide with the 1976 movie, even though H.G. Wells’ book was available.
The Thing (by Alan Dean Foster, King of Movie Novelizations), even though they had Joh Campbell’s Who Goes There? (and to those who object that iyt’s a short story, let me remind them that they’ve often released collections containing the story as tie-ins, as when the re-released The Best of Henry Kuttner, retitled The Last Mimzy, when that movie came out. They could’ve re-released The Best of John Campbell, which included the story)
Similarly, Total Recall by Piers Anthony, despite Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember it for you Wholesale being available (and, in fact, they did re-release Dick collections with that title prominent)
The first few James Bond movies had plots sufficiemntly similar to the books so that Fleming’s books could be re-released with movie poster covers on them, but eventually you got to the point where there was a big gap between movie and film, so that the book Diamonds are Forever had nothing in common with the film – although they released the book with the movie poster as a cover. When The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker came out, both with screenplays by the abysmal Christopher Wood, they decided not to re-release Fleming’s novels, but to have Wood write brand new ones that matched the films. (To be accurate, the title of the latter’s book was James Bond and Moonraker, but who noticed?) To give him his due, Wood’s novels are better than his screenplay. On the other hand, you could argue that it wouldn’t be that hard to do. Wood went on to make the laughably awful Remo Williams – the Adventure Begins , based on Murphy and Sapir;'s The Destroyer series. AFAIK, Wood wrote no accompanying book. The later Destroyer novels made fun of the movie.)
There have been other cases of “novelizations” of movies for which perfectly sefviceably novels already exist.