Books

I recently read Jeff Strand's novelization of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. The book is hilarious as the author pokes fun at some of the dumb scenes in the movie.

There's also a novelization of Ghostbusters. I haven't read that one yet.

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, of all things, got a novelization back in the day.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelization

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.

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.

Dragonheart and the Revenge of the Sith novelizations are still two of my favorite books.

There’s a Hackers one.

It’s really bad

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

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 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.

I read a Willow novelization and it gave back story to Sortia and I really loved getting more insight into her.

Film ones not so much, but Doctor Who does novelise their modern episodes especially since every Classic Who episode has been novelised. Most of them are fairly bare-bones retellings of the plot but the best expand and reimagine the story. The very best in that regard is absolutely Steven Moffat's Day of the Doctor.

At the moment, the new episodes are getting their novelisations released digitally the Monday after they air with physical copies coming in January. It's nearly the shortest turnaround time for an episode novelisation, only beaten by the novelisation for The Five Doctors coming out before the episode.

I work in a library. I definitely see junior novelizations being ordered. Not for everything but big movies for sure (the new Little Mermaid movie is one of the more recent book I’ve seen come through).

Very, very occasionally do I see adult novelizations. Primarily I just see the movie/tv cover for the book.

There are still some. There's a podcast I really enjoy that's dedicated to film novelizations: Authorized Novelizations Podcast

I have the Godzilla (monster verse) novelization. So they do exist.

Yes, though the only one I've read was rogue one just to see what a film novelization was like. For the record I liked the novelization because it filled in some gaps about what Jin Erso did as a Cadre and seeing how K2 perceived the world. He had some awesome last thoughts as well.

Quentin Tarantino wrote a novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which was pretty good and slightly different from the film.

I've also seen one for the 2016 Ghostbusters.

My favorites from the 80s are the Indiana Jones trilogy, Poltergeist, and The Abyss.

Yes, it's common.

They can be released at the same time to cash in but the script always comes first.

The Phantom menace received such a treatment. They take the script and have an author rewrite it as a novel. In the case of the phantom menace it was the fantasy author Terry Brooks.

Years and years ago, I had copies of the novelization of the Michael Keaton Batman and a godawful one of the movie The Manhattan Project where a high schooler makes a functioning nuclear bomb. The Batman one was pretty decent. I think I had the Willow one mentioned above as well.

Not a movie but they still occasionally write novelisations for Dr Who episodes and they usually end up being pretty decent

They were still a thing in the 2010's, at least, I remember the Pacific Rim novelization. And I know they do novelizations of a lot of Disney stuff, even the Disney Channel movies, if they have good brand tie-ins/merch...

Not movies, but Doctor Who still novelizes a bunch of episodes and specials.

They still make them. I've read quite a few of them. They're usually far from being literary masterpieces but they're a fun guilty pleasure for me. Right now I'm reading a novelization that just came out this year for the show Firefly. It's just fun being back in that world.

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.

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.

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

Tarantino wrote one for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although that was an intentional nostalgic throwback to the heyday of novelisations.

I remember as a kid I had a novelisation of Jurassic Park. Not the book that movie was based on, but a novelisation of the actual movie. I remember liking it quite a bit.

The Doctor Who novelisations are famously good, and for many fans of the original (Classic) run of the show, the novelisations are more memorable than the show itself. Any of the ones written by Terrence Dicks are especially good.

The novelisations of the Star Wars prequels are better than the movies, especially Revenge of the Sith. They take the great ideas George Lucas had in that trilogy and iron out the stilted execution.

They're from an era when movies weren't available on demand. It was harder to find a movie again after it left theatres, so novelisations filled the gap. They're still around, but far less necessary than they used to be.

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

The Labyrinth one is excellent, I think it eventually came back in print after a long time out of print. I see them occasionally, probably much more in YA or middle grade though.

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).