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Books ride the movie wave

Publishers are re-releasing old books resurrected by their movie versions

CROSSOVER From "Parineeta".

Sai Ramesh, a V Standard student, picks up the colourful Ice Age-II off the newsstand at a bookshop. He flips through the glossy, colourful, illustrated books one after the other. He shrugs and puts them back, saying: "They are so dumbly simple!"

Once the movie is released, this same kid will come and buy the book, the shop hand is sure. "Right now Chronicles of Narnia is moving like hot cakes," he says, drawing a trend figure. Another bookshop owner concurs. "Lot of people who are coming to pick up Chronicles of Narnia think it is a new book. They don't know that C.S. Lewis wrote the eight-part series and the movie is based on the second part. Now, it is one of the fastest moving items," he says.

Last month, the globalised village watched the scriptwriters of Brokeback Mountain accepting the Oscar and saluting the word and wordsmiths. Larry McMurtry said: "I am going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, Brokeback Mountain was a book (actually a short story by Annie Proulx in The New Yorker) before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world, all are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose."

In four flavours

"Chronicles of Narnia".

Riding the movie wave, HarperCollins has released Chronicles of Narnia in four flavours: a set of eight books, all the novels in one volume, the one volume on which the movie is based The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and a children's version.

As booksellers woo the audience-reader, parents too are delighted, as children who wouldn't read anything beyond their textbooks are now flipping through the pages at a nipping pace. "My daughter is just waiting for the exams to get over so that she can get back to books she loves. She's set aside a budget to purchase all the books that have been made into movies. I am delighted that she is going to read some good prose ," says P. Bhanu, whose daughter's VIII Standard exams will end soon.

The trend that can be partially traced back to Harry Potter series and Lord of The Rings is now well and truly driving the book trade. Even Pogo has done something for making the children discover Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. From just literature it has transformed into a multimedia adventure where Da Vinci Code has been released with all the visual elements that form part of the story like "The Last Supper", the "Vitruviun Man" and other incidental pieces of Brown's novel in an expensive coffee table book.

Parineeta too

"Harry Potter".

Taking a page out of the publishers in the West, some attempts have been made to add zing to the Indian publishing scene. Parineeta, the story written two centuries back by Sarat Chandra Chatopadhyay, is now a paperback in English. It joins the august company of Mangal Pandey, which has also been made into a movie. Rupa has released both books and the sales though not brisk are not bad either, according to booksellers.

Read a book, watch a movie and plug into the world!

Merchandising by another name?

Is book merchandising any different from the toys, dolls, Ts and fashion accessories? By a mile and a yard. Steven Spielberg's Munich gives the writing credit to George Jonas' Vengeance but it is the other version of the story by Simon Reeve One Day in September that is rising in book charts. Same with Chronicles of Narnia. Though the movie is based on "The Lion, The Witch and The Cupboard" episode, it has rekindled interest in totality of C. S. Lewis' works. But Jane Austin is another story altogether, the umpteenth reprising of her: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife... " has kept the book in the focus of arclights as well as book charts both in India thanks to the forgettable "Bride and Prejudice" with Aishwarya Rai and the much more sumptuous "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightley.

SERISH NANISETTI

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