Movie novels are still around, and they aren't all trash — just ask the Chicagoans who wrote them
CHICAGO - Recently, during C2E2 at McCormick Place, the Random House imprint Del Rey, which publishes Lucasfilm-licensed "Star Wars" books, made an unusual choice and offered the novelization of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" three weeks early. And so, visitors to the Chicago comic con bought up hundreds of copies, within a few hours.
Then, hours after that, though the movie version of "Rise of Skywalker" was months old, it began trending again across social media: Excerpts from the book were posted, and though everyone had seen the film and knew the story and long ago decided if they loved or hated it, there was a shock of revelation - as if they didn't know the story at all.
Wait, Emperor Palpatine was a ... what?
Hold on, Lando Calrissian's daughter was ... who?
None of those details were explained clearly by the movie, just the novelization. And now a very roil-ready fandom was roiled again: Did this mean the novelization was better then the film? Or that the movie was actually even worse than they had thought?
A better question would have been: They still make movie novelizations?
Yup, they do. Bunches of them.
Novelizations are, in essence, book-length descriptions of movies, typically written not by the author of the screenplay. They are the complete opposite of the more familiar practice of turning a book into a movie. They probably sound counterintuitive. But the recent "Sonic
