In addition to being very opinionated about the film adaptions of their
favorite books, people also also have strong feelings about what happens to a book
cover after it has become a Hollywood film. Suddenly, the covers that allowed us
to imagine characters for ourselves are now splashed with images of the Hollywood stars that played the main characters in the movie. This drives me
crazy. I feel that it cheapens the look of the novel and it turns book covers into movie posters.
The movie-tie in cover for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was released recently to coincide with the motion picture release. The new cover design has has outraged purists who are angered to see the iconic 1925 cover (designed by Francis Cugat) sitting alongside one with Leonardo DiCaprio's face front and center.
I am always grateful to have read a novel before it becomes a film because it allows you to develop an image of the character in you head based of the descriptions in the novel. It's impossible not to imagine Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight or Natalie Portman as Anne Boelyn in Philippa Gregory's The Other Boelyn Girl after the film has been released.
What are your thoughts on movie-tie in covers? Would you buy one over the original design? Have you seen examples where the movie tie-in design is more successful than the original?
