Novel adapted from a film — not the screenplay, but prose narrative of the plot. Usually a merchandising tie-in product.
You know the drill: the film is in the can, the premiere is looming, and suddenly some writer is sitting somewhere, writing a novel based on your screenplay. That's a novelization — and it has less to do with classic tie-in merchandising than many think. It's not about pouring the screenplay into prose. It's about creating literary depth where the moving image leaves space.
You won't notice this on set. The novelization happens parallel to or after post-production — an author reads the screenplay, possibly watches rough cuts, and then writes an independent literary version of the story. This means: the inner lives of characters you as a DoP will never see. Thoughts, doubts, memories. A novelization fills the cuts, the ellipses, the montage leaps with narrative substance. Where your film needs three seconds for a glance, the novel needs three pages.
Practically, it works like this: large-budget productions — science fiction, fantasy, blockbusters — commission novelizations to transport the film into other media. This was long standard for franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek. Not as quick cash grabs, but as genuine literary companions. Some of these books even became more canonical than the film itself later on — because fans needed more material, because the book explained more. This is relevant to your work if you realize: these productions are designed for transmedia storytelling. The film isn't the whole story.
Today, novelization has become rarer. Streaming is changing the way merchandising is thought of. But there are still projects that consciously tell stories on multiple levels — film and novel as equal art forms, not one as a spin-off of the other. You should know this if you want to think beyond mere production: How do you tell something that also works as a book? Which moments do you need on screen, which can live in prose?