I was at Barnes and Noble yesterday and noticed a very strange thing. A novelization of the movie Inkheart, which is based on a novel called . . . you guessed it, Inkheart.
Does anyone else see something crazy about that? Or is it just me? I get the idea of putting out novelizations of movies such as Star Wars--which are originally written for the screen. But what is the purpose of doing a novelization when a novel already exists? It's ludicrous. First, they hire a screenplay writer to adapt Cornelia Funke's Inkheart novel into a screenplay. Second, they hire a writer to take the screenplay and adapt it into a novel.
And frankly, the biggest reason I would sell movie rights to a book of mine is to increase book sales. A novelization would cut into those expected book sales. I assume Funke received some money for the novelization, but it's more than about money. It's also about people not reading your book that you slaved over, but your story rewritten by someone else. And in fact, it's worse than that. It's your story rewritten by the screenwriter and then rewritten again by the writer-for-hire.
The only argument I can see is that children who are not good readers may read the novelization when they wouldn't read the novel. That could be true, but there are other ways they could have accomplished the same thing. How about adapting the novel into a graphic novel? That's all the rage these days. Or how about adapting the novel (not the movie) into a format for younger kids? I know that sounds the same, but it isn't really. The movie novelization is a diluted form stripped away so far from the original to lose what made it great in the first place.
I'd love to hear other perspectives about this.
