For Warner, an Aptly Named Tie-In

Judy Quinn -- Publishers Weekly, 6/14/1999

There's a mystique about all of this that is self-sustaining, even with Kubrick gone."

So commented Warner associate publisher Les Pockell about the restraints the publisher has been working under to both create and announce its tie-in book to the July 16 Warner Bros. film release Eyes Wide Shut, even after the March 7 death of its legendary director, Stanley Kubrick.

Although it's been planned for some time (after all, Kubrick started filming the movie in 1996), only now is Warner alerting the world that it will be offering a 192-page, $12.95 trade paperback tie-in to the film, which stars real-life marrieds Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Warner's tie-in will consist not only of the screenplay of the film, which Kubrick wrote with Frederic Raphael, but, also, in a rare combination, a new translation of the book it's based on, Austrian dramatist and novelist Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella, Dream Story.

That the tie-in also includes Schnitzler's text comes from an interesting rights demand that perhaps only the late, great Kubrick could have commanded.

When Kubrick acquired dramatic rights to Dream Story, he insisted he also control how and when any new English-language editions would be handled alongside his film. German publisher S. Fischer, which holds world rights to Dream Story, only relatively recently got the go-ahead from both the Kubrick and Schnitzler estates to make new post-film-release book edition deals. Warner became the synergistic choice as U.S. publisher and Penguin U.K. serves as British publisher.

End of the `Dream' for Sun &Moon

The new U.S. book deal, however, put a halt to some nice sales for tiny, Los Angeles-based Sun &Moon Press. The house had been publishing the U.S. edition of Dream Story since 1995 and had seen its typical 1000-copy-annual sales double in the last year or so just due to the mere rumor that the Kubrick film was based on it. Sun &Moon's contract to be the U.S. publisher of Dream Story was up this past August, but rather than allowing Sun &Moon the typical renewal, Fischer pulled back the rights to await the new film tie-in deals.

While Sun &Moon publisher Douglas Messerli joked to PW that perhaps Fischer and the Schnitzler estate could have been "magnanimous and given a small press a chance," he noted that "in the end I'm relieved not to do the book, because it probably would have required an upfront print run that would have been difficult for me." (Warner has yet to set a print run.)

More disappointing to Messerli, however, is the current lack of availability of the book: "I'd say every day I get about 15 calls from people wanting the book now."

No Preview means Post-Movie Tie-in Release

Warner's new U.S. edition won't be out until after the film. It will ship in August, and the hush-hush nature of this film allows for no preview of material.

"We have to wait to get the edited screenplay e-mailed to us after the film is released," said Pockell.

And at press time, the complications in this tricky publishing venture continued. Warner's plan to include a 16-page photo insert of movie stills is now scrapped, since Cruise and/or his representatives objected to releasing these images before the film's international release on September 16.

Penguin U.K., which originally expected to release the book along with Warner, will now wait to publish its book in September in order to include the stills. Warner has decided to go ahead and publish the book with only the movie poster art on the cover for illustration.

It's all rather frustrating, especially since the images Warner can't use will probably leak out over the Internet soon after the film's July release, just as the images from another high-profile movie, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, did. And with the restrictions, the house is missing out on the on the typical publicity and sales-generating strategy of publishing a tie-in book before the film release.

But Pockell remains philosophical about this take-what-you-can-get project.

"Of course we would have liked to release this earlier," he said. "But this is going to be an important book whenever it comes out."