I remember reading them back in the early 90s (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Far and Away, Back to the Future). They don’t seem to be a thing anymore (or am I just not noticing them).
As an aside I remember liking them but I was a preteen at the time so maybe they were terrible and I just liked the movies.
Some, but less so than in the heyday.
There’s often Star Wars ones, I know (which, I mean, with how much SW merch there is, no one should be surprised at that).
Five Nights at Freddy’s movie novelization comes out next month.
I’ve read all the Star Wars movie novelizations.
I remember my first movie novelization though… Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
There’s a Hackers one.
It’s really bad
Oh god, there’s something about comparing a book to Hackers and calling it “really bad” makes me fear this book. But I must read it.
I can one up you. As a kid I had a novel based on the Howard the Duck movie.
When I was a kid I loved the novelizations. They often had additional “scenes” that would add to the story. As an adult, I’m not sure if I would enjoy a novelization or see it as a complete cash grab. Probably depends on the quality of the novelizations, and my general cynicism at the time.
Do you think they were bonus scenes or more like “oh crap, this book will only be a 100 pages if I don’t make some stuff up” scenes?
Most additional scenes in the novelizations were actually in whatever script was referenced.
I remember the Back to the Future 2 novelization had a small exchange between Marty and the server at Cafe 80s about why he wants to use physical money, instead of just swiping his thumb.
I don’t know if that was from a deleted scene from the movie, but I felt it added some more setup to the part where Doc tries to save Jennifer and tells her to hold her thumb to the pad by the door.
There are still some novelizations, as you can see in the article below, but they were much more popular before it was so easy to watch movies at home.
Dragonheart and the Revenge of the Sith novelizations are still two of my favorite books.
The Revenge of the Sith novel is great. Like, insanely great. “How on Earth did they write a book this good using a movie like THAT” kind of great.
Yeah, it’s straight up one of my favorite Star Wars books.
Much less frequent, but still around here and there. It seems increasingly common for movies to be based on a book rather than the other way around because Hollywood is so IP crazy. Even Oppenheimer was based on a particular biography of the man.
Off the top of my head I can say that the recent Godzilla films got novelizations (apparently you can even preorder the novelization of the upcoming Godzilla vs Kong 2), but you’re right in thinking it’s rarer than it once was since I can’t think of any others right now.
Just because a movie was based on a book, that’s apparently no bar to adapting it back to a book again. This Stack Overflow question lists Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, V for Vendetta, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Wicker Man and many others.
But as of yet no Oppenheimer junior novelization appears to be forthcoming…
Thinking of how there was a licensed board game based on the movie Battleship, which is, of course, based on the board game.
Also a board game based on The Queen’s Gambit from Netflix. I don’t if that was just chess, or had some relevant metagame?
I remember noticing a few of those when I was a kid. I think most of the Disney movies that were based on fairy tales then got a novelisation a lot longer than the original story.
The most recent one I’ve heard of was Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
I think novelizations have the potential to be cool, but the few that I have read felt kind of soulless. They just describe what was on the screen.
The OUATIH novelization was cool because it looked at the story from different angels. Felt less like a novelization to me than an alternative view.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, of all things, got a novelization back in the day.
Like the novelization of the Halo games, I imagined the audience is parents thinking “At least he’s reading something”, but might I be being unfair.
I think you are 100% correct. Much like the Minecraft books.
The Cat From Outer Space novelization, by the same guy who wrote the 1978 screenplay, was one of my favourite books when I was a kid.
I scan through lots of newly published books lists. Disney still has tons of movie novelization books, but I don’t recall seeing them from anyone else lately.
One I definitely remember reading, but not start to finish, was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which Ferris and Jeanie do indeed have two younger siblings. The only other difference that I remember, as much as read, was that Sloane gave her thoughts on the place that human beings have in the universe. Or something like that.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood is a Handmaids Tale spinoff published after the show was aired. I actually think it was better written than Handmaids Tale.
I loved The Testaments
Even as a teen/pre-teen I remember novelizations being of decidedly mixed quality unless they came from a well-known author. It’s worth reading the novel version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example.
I read one for Mean Girls a few years ago. The novelization of Battle Royale has a forward that talks about the concept. They are less common now because home media provides an easy way for people to reexperience the movie. That wasn’t that case for most of the history of cinema