Why are movies based on novels never called tie-ins?
- Thread starter Extrocomp
- Start date
For one thing, because the number of people who buy tickets to a movie is hundreds or thousands of times greater than the number of people who buy a book. The key is that "tie-in" is a marketing term. A tie-in is a secondary product that's linked to a more prominent product in hopes of using its cachet to make an additional profit. A movie is always going to be bigger than a book, so in marketing terms it's the primary product by default.
For another thing, you're sort of conflating two different things. A book that's directly based on a movie or show, that's an adaptation of its actual story, is generally called an adaptation, not a tie-in. A tie-in is a separate, original work that's building on its continuity. For instance, Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of the script of Terminator Salvation is called a novelization or an adaptation, whereas Greg Cox's Terminator Salvation: Cold War, an original novel set in the same reality and time frame, is called a tie-in novel. It's a separate story that ties into the original, rather than a retelling of the same story. A story doesn't tie into itself. And movies based on novels or comics are usually adaptations of their stories rather than original works in the same continuity (though one could make a case that the Alex Proyas I, Robot movie kind of qualifies as the latter). So they're adaptations rather than tie-ins.
For another thing, you're sort of conflating two different things. A book that's directly based on a movie or show, that's an adaptation of its actual story, is generally called an adaptation, not a tie-in. A tie-in is a separate, original work that's building on its continuity. For instance, Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of the script of Terminator Salvation is called a novelization or an adaptation, whereas Greg Cox's Terminator Salvation: Cold War, an original novel set in the same reality and time frame, is called a tie-in novel. It's a separate story that ties into the original, rather than a retelling of the same story. A story doesn't tie into itself. And movies based on novels or comics are usually adaptations of their stories rather than original works in the same continuity (though one could make a case that the Alex Proyas I, Robot movie kind of qualifies as the latter). So they're adaptations rather than tie-ins.
Basic marketing.
Making and marketing a movie is much more expensive than publishing and advertising a book and also more reliant on large amounts of revenue on release date. Therefore its needs, not the needs of any other medium, are going to be the lynchpin of any campaign.
Movies made from pre-existing popular or famous books do indeed use the book as another marketing opportunity, using its popularity as a foundation for the new campaign. But this only works if the book is super-established/popular, and even then, the target movie audience will be much wider than the book's readership so the movie's budget & marketing needs take priority.
That's one usage of the word, but in my experience (which includes not only reading a bunch of them but writing them for a living), the term "tie-in" generally refers to original works derived from a film or show rather than direct adaptations. In the case of a reprint with a cover, that's a tie-in in the marketing sense, but not in the storytelling sense. Or perhaps it would be better to say that novelizations are a special case of tie-ins that are thus more commonly known by their own distinct label, novelizations.
Sure, because that new cover has been made in order to cash in on the popularity of the film.
A movie is the primary product. All those other side products, be they video games, novelizations, score / soundtrack releases, McDonald's promotions, T-shirts, what have you, are all "tying into" that central, primary product, with the goal of generating more merchandising dollars.
Neither are some posters.
Oh me too. Wikipedia has made me much smarter, but I still trust the pros.
I'd say Wikipedia's statement is technically correct but incomplete. There's strict definition, and then there's everyday usage.
For instance, a modern cell phone is essentially a very sophisticated computer specializing in multimedia and telecommunications applications. But we don't call it a computer; we call it a phone. So even though it may be literally correct to call it a computer, that doesn't reflect common usage. By the same token, it's literally correct that a novelization is a type of tie-in, but in common usage, it's called a novelization and the term "tie-in" is generally used for other things.
For instance, a modern cell phone is essentially a very sophisticated computer specializing in multimedia and telecommunications applications. But we don't call it a computer; we call it a phone. So even though it may be literally correct to call it a computer, that doesn't reflect common usage. By the same token, it's literally correct that a novelization is a type of tie-in, but in common usage, it's called a novelization and the term "tie-in" is generally used for other things.
