We just recently stumbled upon this NPR piece (from WNYC) that aired during On The Media a couple years ago. Pretty fun and informative listen. Click on the image below to check out the WNYC page for this piece, or listen on the player below.

The Secret Life of Novelizations

Write a great book and you’re a genius. Turn a book into a great film and you’re a visionary. Turn a great film into a book…that’s another story.

Novelizations of films are regular best-sellers with cult followings — some are even more beloved than the films that spawned them — but respected they are not. Instead, they’re assumed to be the literary equivalent of merchandise: a way for the movie studios to make a few extra bucks, and a job for writers who aren’t good enough to do anything else. But the people who write them beg to differ.

OTM producer Jesse Brenneman goes inside the world of novelizations, featuring authors Max Allan Collins, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Hand and Lee Goldberg.

Or read the full transcript at On the Media