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.
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Star Wars Episodes II and III were exceptional in helping the story be understood. If it’s like that, I’d be down to read them these days
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’re novelizations of the new Halloween movies
Marvel made some of its movies into kids books recently, I think I saw Far from Home and winter soldier for Probably age group 8-10 or something like that.
Gremlins was pretty good,E.T.the Extraterrestrial on his adventure on Earth by Melissa Mathersson was damned good
Don’t forget the ET sequel book!
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.
Something I often wish for is a well-written novelisation of Horizon: Zero Dawn, complete with dialogue from the game, working with the studio to ensure the main and side quests are in a suitable order. It’s a brilliant story, loads of lore about the past and present, great characters. But loads of people will never experience it because it’s a game - like my mum, who’s hopeless with consoles. But she loves The Wheel of Time, GoT, Star Wars etc., so a novelisation of Horizon: Zero Dawn would be right up her street. I’d explain the story to her in my own words, but it wouldn’t hit nearly as hard as playing it did.
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 loved movie novelizations when I was a teenager. I still have a handful that were really good—the Goonies was a good book, and The Abyss. I even have a really old novelization of Halloween (tho laughably in that one, Michael Meyers was the reincarnation of a pagan incel!!!) that was respectably scary.
Look for Dead and Buried by Chelsea Quinn Yarborough. It’s a novelization of a little known horror movie, but the book itself is solid.
I read a Willow novelization and it gave back story to Sortia and I really loved getting more insight into her.
