Read the Book First
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 8/6/2001
At least that's the plan at Vintage Books, which has reissued a movie tie-in edition of Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres about a month before the national release of what is being hyped as "the big date movie of the summer." Starring Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Christian Bale and John Hurt, the Universal film will debut nationally on August 17. Vintage has been working closely with Universal by placing movie posters and postcards in bookstores across the country and there have been booksellers' screenings in the top markets. The book was first released in trade paper in 1995. A tie-in edition of 120,000 copies brings the in-print total to 600,000 books. Vintage notes that this is not Corelli's Mandolin's first association with major motion pictures—the book was used as a prop in the final scene of Notting Hill, when Hugh Grant is reading the book as he sits in the park with Julia Roberts.
