7 replies to this topic

[Tarl_Cabot]

I read Licence to Kill by John Gardner but wondered if a novel based on the Film first Dalton film was ever written. Anyone know?

[Bond111]

I'm afraid not. Here's a list of all the novelizations:

http://www.bondian.c...t/34620918.html

[Dr.Carl Mortner]

Shame there was no AVTAK novelization. It was a really good story - a novelization may have been able to iron out some of the wrinkles from the film version. Personally, I would have liked to have known a LOT more about Dr. Mortner's "experiments" - that's the story arc that makes AVTAK for me.

[Bond111]

You're right. AVTAK would make a great novelization. I'm just about to start Moonraker, my first novelization. It would've also been nice to have TLD book, but no such luck.

[Tarl_Cabot]

"based on the Film first Dalton film was ever written. "

Ooops! sorry about the typing error.

[Tarl_Cabot]

Thanks Bond11! Oh well I thought there would be since LTK was written.

[Triton]

I don't know why Eon or UA didn't commission more novelizations of the James Bond movie scripts. Before John Gardner wrote Licence to Kill (1989), the only other novelizations of the film scripts were James Bond and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and James Bond and Moonraker (1979) written by Christopher Wood.

I don't know why the other four films between Moonraker and Licence to Kill did not have novelizations. Did Glidrose (Ian Fleming Publications) have anything to do with it? Since the titles of the four later films were from two Ian Fleming short story collections do you think that Glidrose wanted to boost interest and sales of the original Ian Fleming novels? I wonder how many copies of the story collection For Your Eyes Only were sold when the movies For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill were released or the number of copies of the story collection Octopussy and the Living Daylights were sold when films with those titles opened at the box office.

I think another problem is that the Eon scripts cut and pasted so much of the original Ian Fleming story material that writing novelizations would be difficult. Would the author of the novel follow the novelization continuity or the motion picture continuity.

For example, in the novel Licence to Kill doesn't John Gardner have to explain that Felix Leiter was fed to a shark twice, the first time in the novel Live and Let Die and the note "He Disagreed with Something That Ate Him" appeared on his shark mutalated body for a second time?

[PrinceKamalKhan]

It would have been a great idea if a novelization based upon TLD's screenplay had been written. It's such a strong, complex, intelligently written script and would have made for an engrossing spy novel.