Hollywood has been turning best-selling novels into movies for decades, as far back as ”Gone With the Wind.” But publishers have usually had nothing to do with it. They watched and hoped the movie would drive up sales of the book. Sometimes it did, but just as often it didn’t.
That whole disconnect is disappearing. The best new example is the Dec. 9 release of the movie ”The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” based on the C.S. Lewis children’s classic. Far from sitting back and watching, publisher HarperCollins is working closely with filmmaker Walden Media, unleashing a massive worldwide marketing drive for the books, timed to coincide with the film — and not only for ”The Chronicles of Narnia,” but most of Lewis’s other books as well.
”This is a giant blockbuster for us,” said Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. ” ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ was already important and big for us, but now with the movie, it’s taking on a new life of its own. We have 25 movie tie-in editions — it’s a huge event.”
The movie is produced by Walden Media and Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Adamson and starring Tilda Swinton and the voices of Rupert Everett and Liam Neeson, it tells of four English children, sent to live in an old professor’s country house during the bombing raids of World War II, who stumble through the back of a bedroom wardrobe into the fantasy land of Narnia. It’s a world of winter, populated with dwarves, a faun, talking beavers, an evil witch, and the heroic lion Aslan. The forces of evil, led by the witch, are attacked by Aslan with the four children as allies. There are seven books in the series.
Sales of ”The Chronicles of Narnia” have been rising since last spring, when the movie trailer of ”The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was released. The box set is No. 2 on The New York Times children’s bestseller list. ”We’ve been happily surprised by how strong sales of ‘Narnia’ [books] have been,” said Joe Monti, children’s buyer for Barnes & Noble. But it’s not only Lewis’s children’s books, Monti said: ”It’s also [his] nonfiction. It’s surpassed our expectation at every stage.”
HarperCollins, the publishing arm of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, is pumping out 170 C.S. Lewis-related book titles in more than 60 countries — 140 related to ”The Chronicles of Narnia.” The number represents a vast variety of editions and companion volumes. Lewis’s own books are only the beginning. Besides various editions of ”The Chronicles of Narnia,” there’s a six-volume box set of Lewis’s mostly Christian books for adults, including ”Mere Christianity,” ”The Screwtape Letters,” ”Miracles,” and ”The Problem of Pain.” There’s also a new adult biography titled ”The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis,” by Lewis scholar Alan Jacobs.
For the rest, visit the source link!
