According to this blogger, the novelization for the new movie Red Riding Hood leaves out the ending and asks readers to visit a website after the film’s release to download the final pages.
I can’t help but wonder if this is a deliberate publicity stunt to sell movie tickets (as the blogger implies,) a failed experiment in mixing traditional with digital publishing, or mabye the film was being re-cut up until the very last days before release and rather than releasing a book with a totally different ending (like my Final Destination 3 novelization) and they chose this method to cope with the changes.
For those who don’t know, a novelization isn’t based on a finished movie. It’s based on whatever draft of the script is available before the writer’s deadline. That deadline is often before the film has been shot, or sometimes before it’s even been cast. The book needs to come out at the same time as the movie and because traditional publishing has such a long lag between when the writer turns in their MS and when the book is available in stores, so it’s not uncommon for novelizations to feature cut scenes and different endings. In fact, I think that’s part of the appeal for readers, kind of like viewing an alternate cut of a favorite film. Even if it’s not “as good” as the film, it can still provide an interesting peek at the creative process.
Anybody know the authors or the publisher of the Red Riding Hood novelization? Anyone have the inside scoop on what’s really going on here? Curious…
Also I have to add that as an author, I really feel for those two writers, who now have their sacred, all important Amazon cool-o-meter permanently soiled by a hundred angry one star reviews. Clearly it wasn’t the writers’ choice to leave off the ending. But all those bad reviews don’t count against the publisher or movie studio, they count directly against the writer. Which once again makes me want to shake my fist at the whole concept of the Amazon rating system. But that’s a whole other post.