I’ve read a couple of books that make promises on the jacket:
“Soon to be a movie!”
Neanderthal by John Darnton (1996) proclaims, “Soon to be a Steven Spielberg (Dreamworks) movie!”. The other, The Black Mariah by Jay R. Bonansinga (1994) states in smaller print above the title, “Soon to be a major motion picture directed by George Romero.” As far as I know, neither book became a movie.
What’s the deal here, did the publishers jump the gun? Were the books optioned and the movie deal fell through?
I admit these claims were the major reason I read the books (and bought one). It doesn’t seem like a fair marketing technique if it is a false claim.
Have I been taken in by a marketing scheme?
Not necessarily a scheme. What probably happened was that the book was optioned for a movie, but the project never got started. Often, a producer will option the rights to a book, but lose interest. So he’ll eat the cost and move on to something else.
The publisher probably had reason to believe the movie would be made when they issued the book, but they don’t have any control over what happens.
And, of course, if it falls through after the book is published, they won’t change the cover over it.
It sells books (apparently). They have a pretty good excuse for saying it. They’ll use it.
I remember seeing the “Soon to the a major motion picture!” blurb on the cover of Battlefield Earth - in 1986. At the time, I figured, hey, this story could be boiled down into a decent movie, why not? …
No doubt movie studio had purchased the rights to these books but then studios tend to buy the rights to way more properties than they ever make.
Seems like a terrible marketing practice to me. I mean, who would buy a book just because it is going to become a film? Isn’t it just as likely that someone would think, “oh, maybe I will just wait and watch the movie version instead”.
There is a legal notion in advertising called puffery that allows for greatly exaggerated claims of a subjective nature. The article uses BMW’s slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine” as such a claim.
As Chuck says, the claim was almost certainly based on the purchase of options before the book was published. So it had a factual nature. And even if they thought the purchaser was a clown who could never get the movie off the ground, Soon to be a major motion picture is less of a stretch than The Ultimate Driving Machine.
And the article also says that:
joshmaker, sellers (in all fields) know that people want to be “in,” want to be part of the crowd, part of what everybody is talking about. Book buyers and movie goers overlap but are completely separate marketing targets. The number of people who would not buy a book with such a cover are sure to be swamped by the extra number of people who will.
The publisher of Neanderthal actually got in a bit of trouble for putting the movie info on the book jacket. I heard about it when I worked at Borders around the time the book came out. I think we even had to pull copies that mentioned the movie (but I can’t remember for sure). So I think the permission to say a book has been licensed for a movie must be negotiated as part of the movie deal. But I don’t have any cites to back this up…
There’s still a chance it’s eventually going to BE a movie, I reckon. I read a great book called “Monster: Living off the Big Screen” http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/037575024X/qid=1083633244/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1__i1_xgl14/002-7808233-9407204?v=glance&s=books
that’s the story of a screenwriter who’s optioned to write a film based on the life of Jessica Savitch. After about 15 years of being jerked around it finally ends up being the movie “Up Close and Personal.” So these books COULD end up being movies, just movies with a different name and a story completely unlike the book, haha.
In cases like this, you might also want to check whether the movie based on the book became a made-for-TV movie that aired on TNT at 3:00 AM on a Tuesday. Just being “a movie” doesn’t mean that it got a big theatrical release. I believe that the IMDB lists all movies, including theatrical releases, video releases, and TV movies.
The first time I read Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth there was a sticker on the cover that said “Soon to be a major motion picture!” That was in 1989.
Of course we know how THAT one turned out… :mad:
I have an obviously 1960s PB of Taylor Caldwell’s DEAR & GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN (published I think in 1959) which promises “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture”.