Attack of the Novelizations

Forget about Donald Rumsfeld sending aircraft carriers to the Gulf. For many people this summer, the focus will be on a war waged a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. More often than not, the villains will literally be inhuman, and our heroes' futuristic weaponry won't push the budget into the red, thanks to intergalactic free trade. Such is life at the movies, at least for three of the season's likely blockbusters: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Men in Black 2 and Spider-Man.

After seven months of post-9/11 probity, many of the summer movies are inviting us to set the brain on cruise control. Oddly enough, this should be welcome news for booksellers who, if publishers have guessed correctly, will move millions of tie-in editions, including an unusual number of novelizations. In that field, Star Wars clearly dominates, both in terms of print runs and sheer number of titles. That still leaves plenty of room, however, for Spider Man and Men in Black 2 to do huge business. On the publishing side, Ballantine and its Del Rey imprint are king of the hill, owning tie-ins to all three films, not to mention last winter's Lord of the Rings (and the next two in the trilogy).

There will, of course, be alternatives. For those who prefer a less fanciful approach to their action adventures, two battle-hardened titans, Tom Clancy and the late Robert Ludlum, will also take the field. For the literary/romantic set, there's About a Boy, which opens the same weekend in May as Star Wars, followed in July by The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Oh, and there's a little film from Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise called Minority Report (Fox). Kids will have their day with Scooby-Doo, Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!, Disney's Lilo & Stitch and a sequel to the successful Stuart Little. Still, in terms of an absolute phenomenon, this summer is likely to be, as Bill Murray used to sing, "Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars."

When it comes to Star Wars Episode II, the numbers tell the story. Based on total sales of 1.3 million hardcover copies of the Episode I novelization by R.A. Salvatore, Ballantine is shipping 800,000 hardcovers of his novelization of Episode II. "Bottom line," said Kuo-yo Liang, Ballantine's director of licensing, "[no other novelization] compares to this printing in hardcover. Period." Meanwhile, DK Publishing will ship more than 300,000 copies of its two Star Wars tie-ins, a visual dictionary and a new entry in the successful DK Cross Sections series. Dark Horse Comics will also push out 145,000 graphic novel adaptations of Episode 2, as well as a spin-off series based on the character Jango Fett.

Ballantine hopes it won't stop there. "Star Wars is a leaping-off point," said Liang. The house is taking Salvatore to a three-day Star Wars convention in Indiana in May, to hawk not only his Episode II novelization, but also his bestseller Vector Prime, which launched New Jedi Order, a series of 19 titles that chronicle further adventures of the Episode II characters, to be published over five years. The series' first 12 books have all sold more than 100,000 copies in hardcover, and average 300,000 copies in mass market. In addition, Salvatore and four other authors will be promoting some of their non–Star Wars titles. "With 30,000 sci-fi fans showing up," said Liang, "it's likely that a good portion will also respond to other sci-fi titles. Our message is: don't stop reading!"

After Star Wars, it's a bit of a step down to the Spider-Man novelization, which will roll out with a mere 325,000 mass market copies, and Men in Black 2, which will push 225,000 copies into stores. Still, flanking both films will be an armada of subsidiary titles targeting various age ranges, all the way down to what Amazon.com classifies as "baby to preschool."

In this summer's computer graphics-driven marketplace, Paramount and Universal find themselves in the position of servicing what has, surprisingly, become another niche market: the run-and-shoot action flick. With Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears, Paramount hopes to revive its highly successful Jack Ryan franchise by targeting a younger audience. Where in the past Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford played Ryan with a stolid gravity amid plots that tended to emphasize adult choices, the new film puts Ben Affleck in the role. Shaving 10 to 15 years off Ryan's life necessitated cutting his rank and dropping the wife and kids. But with director Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams; Sneakers) at the helm and a plot that hinges on restarting a cold war with Russia, it's anybody's guess as to whether the film will click with Gen-Xers and broaden Clancy's reach.

Regardless, Berkley is printing a whopping one million tie-in editions and repackaging the first four Jack Ryan books (two of which were already filmed): The Hunt for Red October, Red Storm Rising, Cardinal of the Kremlin and Patriot Games. "It's the summer of Jack Ryan," said Berkley group executive editor Tom Colgan. "These titles haven't been refreshed in a while, and it's time to do it." Filmgoers who pick up The Sum of All Fears may be surprised to learn that the villains in the book are not the European neo-Nazis of the film, but Muslim extremists. On the other hand, the book's threat of Muslim nuclear terrorism might resonate more immediately.

In what could become a superstar national security smackdown, Affleck's Oscar partner, Matt Damon, battles international intrigue in The Bourne Identity, the first of a hoped-for trilogy of films about Robert Ludlum's secret agent. Universal employed ultra-hip director Doug Liman (Go) to trick out what is an otherwise classic spy-vs-spy plotline: CIA operative loses memory and runs from former employers looking to liquidate a potential leak. Bantam is printing more than 300,000 splashy-covered tie-in editions for a book that has never been out of print. No word yet on future plans for other titles in the Bourne series.

Not content to watch the youngsters steal the spotlight, Harrison Ford shows up behind the Iron Curtain in K-19: The Widowmaker, the true story of the Soviet Union's first nuclear ballistic submarine, which nearly suffered a meltdown that threatened to ignite an all-out war. The film, from National Geographic Society's new feature division, is told entirely from the Soviet point of view and features a technical failure in place of a villain. Controlling the content from beginning to end, National Geographic is also releasing 75,000 companion books.

But in the conglomeratized world of cross-promotional tie-ins (where a film can be the loss-leader for an ancillary empire), reality cannot trump fantasy. K-19 does not have much sequel or series potential--how many times can this crew almost die inside a sub?--and even Jack Ryan and Jason Bourne hold limited ancillary opportunities. SF/fantasy properties, on the other hand, naturally lend themselves to extrapolation beyond the film because the entire world has been manufactured. A good SF/fantasy title will yield more than a tie-in, more even than a series of books; it's really a brand. And publishers can capitalize on this more easily than Hollywood because producing a fantasy book is no more expensive than producing any other book, which is not the case with film.

Ambition of Star Wars magnitude tends to cast an unfair pall on other tie-ins. There are four family titles this summer that would easily do stand-out business if they weren't up against such major competition. Scooby-Doo, Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!, Disney's Lilo & Stitch and a sequel to the successful Stuart Little will each generate a torrent of tie-in books for readers of all-ages. But the fundamental difference is that these are franchises, not brands that can be endlessly extended.

Science fiction legend Philip K. Dick has a long association with film, including Blade Runner, Total Recall and a slew of upcoming projects, the first of which is Minority Report. Given the due-process debate inspired by September 11, this guilty-until-proven-innocent tale of prosecuting citizens for crimes they are predicted to commit in the future is timely indeed. Pantheon is publishing the short story "Minority Report" for the first time as a hardcover stand-alone, with a first printing of 30,000 copies. The book features a handsome new design by Chip Kidd that opens at the top and bears a large sticker touting the film. Kensington, meanwhile, is printing 50,000 trade editions of a Philip K. Dick short story collection that has been redesigned to feature "Minority Report."

On the literary front, Universal Pictures believes Nick Hornby's fin-de-bachelor pic, About a Boy, will appeal to a niche that's generally starved during the summer, particularly in the early part of the season. Riverhead Books is bullish, printing 200,000 copies. Craig Burke, Riverhead's director of trade paperback publicity, acknowledged that some among Hornby's mix of literary and populist fans may prefer the original edition, which has already shipped more than 225,000 copies, "so we'll continue to print that one as well." Meanwhile, a two-track sampler CD from the hip soundtrack by U.K. wünderband Badly Drawn Boy will be doled out at bookstores.

For women turned off by the sci-fi juggernaut, writer/ director Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise) saunters to the rescue with an adaptation of Rebecca Wells's blockbuster Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. HarperTorch will publish more than one million copies of the mass market tie-in edition; the Perennial trade paperback and HarperCollins hardcover are both still in print.

So there's something for everyone this summer, though it helps if you're a young male sci-fi fan. Either way, publishers should enjoy a bonanza. It's too soon to know if the rush of new readers will form a beachhead or if they'll drift back to their videogames. But for now, Ballantine's Liang is positively buoyant: "It's been a phenomenal time. We feel lucky. And it's a lot of fun."