Do all Bond films get novelized.

The Sidekick

As you may know most of the james bond films use Ian Fleming Bond Books titles. A lot of them though are completely different stories and plots from the orignals.

So my question is, have all the James Bond Films be wrote into books using the story and plot from the actual films. (e.g.Octopussy Film comes out, and a book form is published.)

Hardyboy

No; the first two novelizations were of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both written by Christopher Wood, but there were no novels based on the screenplays for the next four films. The novelizations picked up again with Licence to Kill and continued through DAD. Ian Fleming's original Casino Royale was issued as a tie-in with the movie, and no novelization is planned for QoS.

Shady Tree

Christopher Wood's novelisation of 'The Spy Who Loved Me' is the best of the bunch, I think. While following the plot of the often lighthearted movie - for which he wrote the screenplay - Wood surprises the reader by carrying off his novelisation as if it was a serious addition to the canon of literary Bond penned by Fleming. He does a very good job of imitating Fleming's style and he locates us in exactly the same world as Fleming's stories (if a couple of decades later). And because the movie uses only the Fleming title, there's no continuity clash between Wood's TSWLM novelisation and any episodes from Fleming's own work.

The same can't be said of the novelisation of 'Moonraker'... In that one, Wood doesn't even try to explain how the literary Bond could meet a villain called Hugo Drax a second time around! That's too much of a coincidence to bear any scrutiny... so Wood wisely leaves it alone! (It's interesting - and a nice touch - that the physical appearance of Drax in Wood's novelisation isn't based on Michel Lonsdale but on Fleming's vision of the character: Drax is once again a red-headed ogre.)

In the 'License To Kill' novelisation, John Gardner's attempt to reconcile the plot of the film with the Ian Fleming continuity is simply silly: he makes an issue of the fact that it's the second time around that Felix Leiter has been thrown by a villain to predators from the sea and mutilated (the first time having been in Fleming's LALD)! As Bruce Willis put it, in 'Die Hard 2', "How can the same sh*t happen to the same guy twice?!"

This is from p.36 of the LTK novelisation, in a chapter called 'Lightning Sometimes Strikes Twice': "'Not again!' Bond heard his own voice and knew exactly what he meant. His near total recall of that terrible time in Miami, when Felix lost half a leg and an arm to Mr. Big's shark, came scurrying, like a pack of tarantulas into his head. This time, Felix had already lost his new bride and Bond began to face the probability of his old friend being dead also."

Gardner should have taken the same approach as Wood in the 'Moonraker' novelisation and not bothered with a pretence of flawless continuity between the sequence of Fleming novels and a story based on the screenplay... True, the 'License To Kill' movie served up an original story, but it also raided the Fleming archive for some interesting situations (the fate of Leiter in Fleming's LALD being the obvious case). So in the prose version of LTK, Gardner should have simply breezed over the situational circumlocutions and NOT made some lame acknowledgement of them in his narrative just for the sake of claiming an over-arching continuity with the Ian Fleming series! (Oh, and it's rather irritating that - having gone to all this trouble of insisting that 'lightning sometimes strikes twice' - Gardner should then just ignore the coincidence that the literary Bond has already encountered another character by the name of Milton Krest!)

By the way, Penguin's new collection of Fleming's James Bond short stories, published under the title of one of those stories, 'Quantum Of Solace' (in which Bond himself has only an incidental role), is perhaps an example of cynical marketing. Casual or careless purchasers thinking they're buying a novelisation of the new film of the same name will be highly disappointed. All but one of the Fleming short stories are already available in established paperback compilations, 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'Octopussy'. What the Penguin 'Quantum Of Solace' edition has to offer that will perhaps excite Fleming fans is the addition of the slight but fascinating '007 in New York'. But that's hardly going to give "solace" to the casual purchaser who was hoping they'd bought a solid tie-in with Daniel Craig!

Napoleon Plural

Brilliant stuff Shady. {[]

Am I right in thinking that Wood's novelisations were called James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker?

I assumed that as post-Moonraker the films borrowed more from Fleming's source material, it would be harder to utilise it into a 'book of the film' for copywrite reasons. But also, as they were short stories, to do the usual movie tie-in. FYEO had a painted pic of Moore on the front, with 'the inspiration for the new James Bond film' across it, while Octopussy had a Bondish fellow but not really Moore or Connery. AVTAK - had nothing.

Shady Tree

Napoleon Plural wrote:

Brilliant stuff Shady. {[]

Am I right in thinking that Wood's novelisations were called James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker?

Thanks, Napoleon. Yes, these were the full titles of Wood's novelisations. It's not so hard to obtain copies even now, on eBay.

Agent Wade

They've released a new compilation of all the short stories. It has the title Quantum of Solace of course. I mean, that just makes simple sense.

chrisno1

I've often wondered why some bright spark doesn't novelise the Bond films retrospectively. It wouldnt take much effort and they could even use the original screenplay, filling in some of the gaps in continuity etc.
Incidently when FYEO was released I remember Marvel (or was it DC?) releasing a two edition comic strip version of the film, which was rather good, if somewhat short. Does anyone know if this was a one off or were there any more like it?

Barbel

chrisno1 wrote:

Incidently when FYEO was released I remember Marvel (or was it DC?) releasing a two edition comic strip version of the film, which was rather good, if somewhat short. Does anyone know if this was a one off or were there any more like it?

Yes, there was a Marvel comic strip version of OP as well, published as the James Bond Octopussy Special. It's got an interesting "Making Of" ection as well, like the FYEO comic strip.

Willie Garvin

Barbel wrote:

chrisno1 wrote:

Incidently when FYEO was released I remember Marvel (or was it DC?) releasing a two edition comic strip version of the film, which was rather good, if somewhat short. Does anyone know if this was a one off or were there any more like it?

Yes, there was a Marvel comic strip version of OP as well, published as the James Bond Octopussy Special. It's got an interesting "Making Of" ection as well, like the FYEO comic strip.

Additionally,Eclipse Comics published the official comics adaptation of 1989's Licence to Kill in the graphic novel format.Mike Grell(who'd previously written and drawn an original 007 miniseries for Eclipse entitled Permission to Die)write the LTK script with Tom Yeates providing the artwork.

Interestingly,although all of the cast members' images were available for use in this book,Yeates chose to give 007 a face much closer to the one Grell had devised in his earlier 007 project rather than go with Timothy Dalton's.The face Grell came up with was an admixture of the young Hoagy Carmichael crossed with the young Sean Connery--with black hair,blue eyes and the long scar running down 007's cheek(as per Ian Fleming's descriptions in Casino Royale and From Russia With Love).That said,there are some frames in which Dalton's visage is clearly recognizable.But then,(in my opinion)with his lupine features,Dalton probably comes closer-overall-to matching Fleming's descriptions of 007 than any of the other actors who've played the role.;)

caractacus potts

BUMP! ing an ancient thread...
______________________________________________
(1) I wonder why they did not novelise the 80s era Bond films between ...Eyes... and License...?

FYEO was the closest Fleming adaptation since OHMSS, obviously no novelisation needed there.
But,
the elements of Octopussy and ...Daylights that came from Fleming were different enough, at least as much as Moonraker, that they were non-overlapping stories, really only sharing general setpieces. Magda was not Maria Freudenstein, the purpose of the auction was different, and I think the object being auctioned was different. Kara Milovy was not Trigger, the purpose of the attempted sniper attack was different, it was a different city. Even the auction expert, and the agent who threatened to report Bond for spoiling his shot, had unique if similar names. BookBond would have been experiencing these events for the first time, with no need for contradictions or coincidence.

...View...of course had nothing to do with what Fleming wrote, an entirely new experience bookBond could have had.

Any of these three movie were just as worthy of a novelisation as Moonraker.
Whereas License... actually repeated a lot of what Fleming did write, despite the all-new title.



(2) also, I thought I once read here that there were novelisations of Diamonds... and ...Golden Gun, but done for long out-of-print newspapers. Did I dream this? (entirely possible, I do have recurring dreams about missing Tintin adventures, why not missing Bond novelisations). If they ever existed, did they ever get scanned or transcribed?

Barbel

Re AVTAK, four tie-in books were published:





These were a sort of precursor to computer adventure games, called Find Your Fate where the reader has to make choices sending him/her to a certain page to continue the story, and aimed at a teenage audience.



Re newspaper serialisations of DAF and TMWTGG, this thread may be of interest: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/30786/man-with-golden-gun-printed-in-an-australian-newspaper-1965/


Re "The Property Of A Lady"

caractacus potts wrote:

I think the object being auctioned was different.

Only slightly, in that it was a globe by Carl Faberge rather than an egg.


And for novelisations of OP and AVTAK, it helps to know Dutch.... https://www.thebookbond.com/2013/01/chris-moores-unknown-novelizations-of.html

PPK 7.65mm

I am very surprised that in this day and age no novelizations of the Craig films were produced. Although given how spoiler cautious moviegoers are in the present day, perhaps its for the best. For a majority of major movie releases in the 1980's and 1990's novelizations and comic book adaptations were part of the marketing plan. Having read and owned many of these, it is fun see how different the screenplay was and what might have happened if certain scenes were not cut from the final print of the film. The novelization of Licence To Kill has the scene present where Bond and Sharkey shadow the WaveKrest at sea. Also of note is author John Gardner's giving Bond a Walther P38K(a short barreled version of the famous P-38 pistol) instead of the PPK. Bond only uses once during the escape from the Barrelhead bar, it is later taken from him when he meets Sanchez.

caractacus potts

caractacus potts wrote:

I think the object being auctioned was different.

Barbel wrote:

Only slightly, in that it was a globe by Carl Faberge rather than an egg.

I think BookBond could have attended two auctions of Faberge objects in one lifetime without violating the spacetime continuum, More likely than meeting two Draxes and certainly more likely than Felix being fed to the sharks twice.

Barbel wrote:

Re newspaper serialisations of DAF and TMWTGG, this thread may be of interest: https://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/30786/ma

I cant tell from that thread if these are new novelisations based on the films, or just Fleming's originals serialised … the latter seems much more likely.
By coincidence these were the first two Fleming books I tried to read (based on what films ABC had most recently broadcast) and was surprised at how little the books resembled the film, especially since James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me was such a close adaptation. It took me a while to spot the error in my logic.

Barbel wrote:

And for novelisations of OP and AVTAK, it helps to know Dutch.... https://www.thebookbond.com/2013/01/chris-moores-unknown-novelizations-of.html

woah-ho, some enterprising agent needs to do a translation of those


I saw one of those Find Your Fate books the other week but didn't buy it … I gather they're inspired by scenes in ...View... but expanded into bigger stories contradicting what happens in the film. Meaning that, unconventional as the format may be, they are all new Bond adventures only available in book form, just like Gardner's new books … but how do they fit into continuity? They exist within a third tier of subtly contradictory realities for our agent Bond.
One of these days someone is going to have to write Crisis on Earth Double-Oh, in which realities collide.

Barbel

caractacus potts wrote:

I cant tell from that thread if these are new novelisations based on the films, or just Fleming's originals serialised … the latter seems much more likely.

It's the former- not written by Maibaum or Mankiewicz (though obviously based on their material which in turn was based (loosely) on Fleming) but, if memory serves cos it's been a long long time, by someone associated with the newspaper. Again if I recall correctly, these started off in great detail but took up less and less space on the page as the story progressed thus compressing the events of the film as they got nearer to the end. These were prose, with some illustrations (at first).

PPK 7.65mm

The newspaper strips are based on the original novels by Ian Fleming. The Property of A Lady was skipped over however and other than an adaptation of Colonel Sun, all of the stories lines after The Spy Who Loved Me were original. Goldeneye was also to have gotten the comic book treatment, sadly TOPPS comics canceled the series after the first issue. This was due to the cover art of issue two which had Bond pointing his gun at Xenia, well she had him between her legs. Thankfully, Spy Guise did sell a limited number of roughs drafts of issues two and three in 2002 . I am glad that I was able to purchase some copies for my collection.

A View To A Kill and The Living Daylights also got a comic book adaptations in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark as part of the Semic James Bond comic series. More about them here: https://web.archive.org/web/20070507050146/http://home9.inet.tele.dk/oreskov/

caractacus potts

caractacus potts wrote:

the elements of ...Daylights that came from Fleming were different enough, at least as much as Moonraker, that they were non-overlapping stories, really only sharing general setpieces. ... Kara Milovy was not Trigger, the purpose of the attempted sniper attack was different, it was a different city.

I've decided the two versions of ...Daylights do overlap enough Bond could not have realistically experienced both events in one lifetime:
even though Kara Milovy (an untrained phony sniper) is not Trigger (a pro, regarded by Bond as an equal), Bratislava is not Berlin, and Yorgi defecting is not Number 272 coming in from the cold
… Bond would still have twice had the experience of waiting for a sniper, oggling a beautiful cellist as he waits, only to discover the sniper is that very cellist and deciding to spoil her shot rather than kill her … that is a rather unlikely coincidence.
He probably has had to snipe a sniper more than once in his dirty damn job, but as soon as he spotted the beautiful cellist in Bratislava he must have thought "woah, there goes that deja vu again"


on the other hand the Octopussy movie is actually a sequel to Fleming's short story … how many filmed sequels to unfilmed Fleming stories have we got? I think that's the only one.

caractacus potts

stupid me: the latest film SPECTRE is also a sequel, and to the exact same Fleming short story.
and I don't think it contradicts anything in Fleming's Octopussy. so it could theoretically even be canonical.
There could have been a novelization that would fit neatly into Fleming's continuity.

… well except it does contradict three of Fleming's earlier novels, but you can't have everything.

PPK 7.65mm

Of the novelizations of the film screenplays, Goldeneye is my favorite. Since it was an original screenplay John Gardner did not run into the same issues that his Licence To Kill adaptation did. I though it was interesting that he even included a reference to Seafire (his pervious original novel) in one chapter. As a movie buff, I always find interesting to read novelizations of screenplays since they are often based on earlier script drafts and contain scenes and dialogue cut from the final version of the film.