Word is that the Mutant Chronicles movie (for which I wrote the novelization) will finally get a theatrical release this year. Magnet Releasing—a division of Magnolia Pictures—picked up the distribution rights, and it plans to have a limited release of the film on April 24.

In advance of that, though, the film will be released on HDNet‘s Ultra VOD service on March 27. That makes it available to anyone who has access to HDNet rather than the “select cities” which will host the film in theaters.

I saw a mostly finished cut of the film at a private screening last year, but I’m looking forward to seeing it in a theater with a crowd of people too. I’m thrilled that it’s finally going to happen.

UPS just showed up with a big box o’ books from Random House. I sliced it open to find my author’s copies of my novelization of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film.

There’s nothing like holding a fresh copy of one of your novels in your hand. It has that new-book smell.

To celebrate, I found a copy of a movie poster that uses the same image as the one on the cover of the book. I also tracked down a trailer for the film. Consider it a preview for the novel as well.

Yesterday, an envelope showed up from Random House (which owns Del Rey) with a short stack of cover flats* for my novelization of the Mutant Chronicles film. The new cover looks great, much better than the original one Del Rey had mocked up. Tom Jane makes a great Mitch Hunter.

Better yet, Del Rey has posted an excerpt from the book on its website. Paradox gave me a tremendous amount of freedom with the book, allowing me to create many new scenes to fill in some of the blank spots in the film’s necessarily compressed story. I’m pleased with out it turned out.

The Mutant Chronicles novelization goes on sale September 30, I’m told. Be sure to look for it then.

*Covers are printed on a different kind of paper than the rest of the book, so they’re done separately from the pages. Most publishers are smart enough to have the printer make a couple hundred extra unfolded covers—known as “cover flats”—for promotional use. The cost of adding a relatively small number of covers to the regular print run isn’t much at all, so you wind up with a stack of inexpensive, full-color ad slicks for the book.

Having just finished another proofing of my novelization of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film, I poked around the web and found a few new posters for the film. The first shows the film’s cast arranged against some dramatic backlighting.

This is my favorite of those I’ve seen so far. Most of the others show a mutant’s boneblade stabbing through a helmet, which is cool but concentrates more on the story’s horror than its heroism. In contrast, this image is stark, it shows something of the feel of the movie, and the tagline—“Have faith”—works perfectly for the story.

I also love this other one I found. It’s a shot of Devon Aoki toting an assault rifle as she moves through a wasted landscape, but the kicker is that it’s all done in Russian. As far as I know, this is a poster for the Russian release of the film, as there’s nothing else Russian about the movie. Still, the Cyrillic script gives lends the image an even more iconic feel.