I got back from Hollywood last night after one of the smoothest trips I’ve ever had. The good people at Paradox Entertainment (particularly Fred Malmberg and Jay Zetterberg) flew me out for a preview screening of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles movie and supplemented that with a couple of excellent nights out.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m writing the novelization for the film, and I turned in the manuscript nearly a year ago. That was, of course, long before the film had been completed, and I worked entirely from the script, using my imagination and my long experience with the Mutant Chronicles games to bring it to life.

It’s no surprise that director Simon Hunter’s film differed from the images in my head. As with most films, the story changed a bit during shooting and editing too, so there are some inevitable discrepancies between the movie and the script-based book.

To fix that, I watched the film twice. Paradox set up showings (for other business reasons than just helping out me) in a private screening room on the Sunset Strip, and I sat and took notes, tapping them out on my laptop as the film rolled on. Now I get to go back and polish the book until it more closely resembles the film. There aren’t all that many large differences to resolve, but being able to see the film means I can pay a lot more attention to descriptions of the people and places than I could before, and make them more accurate.

As for the movie, I loved it. I’m bound to be biased, of course, having worked on both this novel and for years on the games on which the film is based. But it looks great, the actors do a wonderful job, and there are some truly fantastic moments in it. I can’t wait until you all get to see it too.