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.

According to Amazon.com, my novelization of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film is now slated for release on August 26, 2008. It’s slated to weigh in at 320 pages and come to you courtesy of publisher Del Rey. I got the chance to meet my editor, Keith Clayton, again at Comic-Con, at the Del Rey booth. He told me I’d just missed seeing the film’s star, Tom Jane, by a matter of seconds.

Ain’t It Cool News sent a correspondent to the set of the Mutant Chronicles movie last summer, and I just discovered the report. I got there by way of the revelation of the new teaser poster for the film. It’s evocative.

I just got a bit of PR from Paradox Entertainment on this, so I believe it’s official:

MUTANT CHRONICLES NOVELIZATION BY RANDOM HOUSE
Random House has signed on to publish a movie novelization of the upcoming Mutant Chronicles film slated to release in the spring of 2008. Matt Forbeck (Knights of the Silver Dragon series) will write the adaptation based on the film’s spooky sci-fi/war script.

As you might imagine, I’m more than a little excited about this. I’ve already read the script, and I’m itching to get to work.

Robert Farmer wrote to ask:

I’m a longtime fan of yours, in fact dating back to your work on Mutant Chronicles when I was just getting into the hobby. I was wondering what your thoughts were on the upcoming movie and the new RPG being developed by Center of Gravity.

Ah, thanks for the name. I’d been told the RPG was in the works, but I didn’t know the name of the new publisher or if it was public information yet or not. Glad to see things are moving along on that front.

Given the wildly different take on MC that the movie seems to be working from (judging from the 7 web documentaries currently posted), are you still looking forward to seeing it in the theaters?

Very much so. I know it won’t match up with the original property from the early ’90s, but it’s many years since the game went out of print, so I expected as much. Also, any translation of a setting into another medium requires changes to make it fit the new medium better. I’m not put off by that.

And how do you feel about the re-imagining COG is taking? Are there any phantom pains from the game you put so much time into, or is it a case of “your job is done”?

My job was done a looooong time ago, and I never was the game’s publisher. As much as I loved it, it was never truly mine. Also, no matter what happens with the movie or the new game or anything else, I still have the original books on my shelves. I can always take them down and read or play with them as much as I like.