HOLLYWOOD “Hits the Books”

Books are big this fall, at least on movie screens. As USA Today notes, in a feature headlined, “Hollywood Hits The Books Hard This Fall,” over two dozen book adaptations will arrive in September and October. By our count, over a dozen more arrive by the end of the year (see our listing and check on the links to the right of this page for trailers).

Which adaptations will cause the books to rise? Judging from USA Today‘s own best seller list, it doesn’t matter how well the films are received. Both The Book Thief and The Giver were regarded as box office failures, but the books they were based on enjoyed unprecedented success. In many cases, the marketing of a movie alone can make the book soar, as in the case of The Maze Runner, which has been steadily rising on best seller lists, weeks in advance of the movie’s Sept. 19 release. It seems that name recognition is key; like the old adage about how to make $2 million, more success comes to those books that have had it already.

To help you prepare for the fall onslaught, we’ve created an Edelweiss collection of over 70 tie-ins to upcoming movies & TV.

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It contains plenty of titles with major name recognition, led by Gone Girl and Unbroken, and, of course, Mockingjay, all of which continue to be such big sellers that we may not even notice a bump from the movies.  Attention will also return to previous long-running best sellers Wild, American Sniper and Before I Go to Sleep, and we expect HBO’s Olive Kitteridge to remind people that they meant to read Elizabeth’s Strout’s book when it won a Pulitzer.

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Among kids tie-ins, however, a relative unknown may dominate. The team behind Disney’s phenomenon Frozen has created Big Hero 6, releasing in November, based on a Marvel comic series that is no longer in print. Many tie-ins, however, are coming from Random House/Disney. Hachette’s Yen imprint made a stir this week when they announced they will publish an English-language version of the Kodansha manga series, Haruki Ueno’s Baymax, which features the robot from the movie.

Come Christmas, we look to the more familiar, as a new incarnation of Paddington hits the screens (sorry, he is not voiced by Colin Firth who was deemed too “mature” for the part).

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Later this month, we’ll see if the Boxtrolls brings more readers to Alan Snow’s nearly 550-page book, Here Be Monsters! (Atheneum, 2008, rereleased 8/5/14), or if attention will be focused on the much short tie ins.

Happy ordering.

One Response to “HOLLYWOOD “Hits the Books””

  1. Book to film: The Box Trolls | ALSC Blog Says:

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