Novelizations? WTF?
It’s just a book based on a screenplay, usually, but not always, for a feature film.
Let’s keep this in the spirit of of a free Internet – Wikitionary gives us:
novelization (countable and uncountable, plural novelizations)
- The writing of a novel based on fact; fictionalization
- A text novel that is an adaptation of a story from a visual medium such as film
OK. But Why?
Honestly, I love novelizations. I was a child of the 70s, so my formative years were the 80s. Both because of that, and because it’s empirically true, the 80s was greatest decade in movie history, but it also represented peak-novelization. Virtually every major movie released throughout that 10-year period was accompanied by a novelization (there were notable exceptions, however – where the hell it our Big Trouble in Little China novelization?), and I bought and read many of them. Sadly, I no longer own my collection of novelizations, so this is a chance to try and recreate that collection, and get my hands on others that I’m keen to read. The plan is to roughly follow chronological order based on movie release date, read the novelization (if I can find a copy), watch the movie, and then post some thoughts about the whole thing.
Ground rules
We’re sticking with feature films
I need to put some reasonable bounds around what to include, and while there are no doubt rich picking to be had from Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X Files, and many, many other TV series novelizations, there’s just too many to cover. So, feature-length movies only (but there might be exceptions along the way).
Not exhaustive
I’m not even sure it would be possible to create a definitive list of every novelization written and published, even with TV series excluded, much less find copies and read them all. So we’re going to be selective, but not to worry, there’s still plenty to cover.
No junior novelizations
Depending on the movie in question, a studio may have opted for a novelization that was targeted at a younger audience, so in many cases we’ve ended up with the junior novelization. I’d likely have been keen to read these back in the day, but not so much now, so we’ll just skip these (though again, there may be exceptions).
Gotta be for a movie I actually want to see
Even if we’re not including junior novelizations, there are still titles that were published for movies that I’ve simply no interest in watching (or reading), so I’m only aim to read those based on a screenplay for a movie that either I’ve already seen and enjoyed, or something that I’ve yet to see but haven’t. Fair warning: it’s mostly going to be sci-fi, fantasy and horror with a healthy dose of action thrown in for good measure. Basically, all the best movies of the 80s, plus a grab-bag list of earlier and later films according to my personal preference.