A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.
Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays. Similarly, material from the screenplay or filmed scenes that are cut from the final production may still be present in a novelization, often because the novel is completed for publication while the film is still being edited for release. The practice was particularly popular for successful films and television series before the advent of home video, which gave people the ability to record programs or buy commercial releases for repeated viewing.
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A novel as a tie-in to any successful major film release is considered an important marketing strategy. If a film is based on a novel, the novel is generally reissued with a cover based on the film's poster (sometimes with pictures from the film included) but if it is an original screenplay or based on a novella or short story a novelization is often commissioned to fill the marketing niche. Novelizations have been published since at least the 1920s; for example, the 1928 film The Fleet's In! starring Clara Bow was novelized by Russell Holman. L. Frank Baum's Tik-Tok of Oz (1914) and The Scarecrow of Oz (1915) might be deemed novelizations, as they are based on the musical play The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1913) and the feature film, His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1915), respectively, which were adaptations of earlier Oz books, Ozma of Oz (1907) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), respectively.
There is also a smaller market associated with novelizations of television; the television series Star Trek, for instance, was adapted by James Blish into a set of short stories which were bundled to create saleable books. The practice was repeated by Alan Dean Foster with the Trek animated series to create the Star Trek Log series.
A similar practice is an adaptation of a film in comic book form, essentially an illustrated novelization. The art in a comics adaptation can vary from original perspectives to directly copying still scenes from the film, though issues of actors' personality rights may prevent exact likeness of film characters. The majority of Marvel Comics' Super Special series featured film adaptations; DC Comics customarily prints adaptations as stand-alone, one-shot issues. Sometimes a comic book adaptation can lead to an ongoing licensed series by the same publisher; examples of these include Marvel's Star Wars series based on the original trilogy and DC's various series based on the first six Star Trek films, both of which featured stories set during the "gaps" between the films.
It has recently become common for authors who write novelizations to write original novel sequels in between novelizations. The novels Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: First Strike, which serve as prequels and sequels to the video game Halo: Combat Evolved, were written before and after the novelization of the game. Author Greg Cox wrote the original novel Underworld: Blood Enemy after writing the novelization of Underworld and before writing the novelization of the sequel film Underworld: Evolution. Also, while novelizing the Resident Evil video games, author S. D. Perry wrote original novels that took place between the novelizations. With the rise in recent years of films based on comic book properties, the publishers of the adapted properties have also started producing prequel comics as supplemental material, set in the canon of the films rather than that of the source material.
Baetens, Jan. "From Screen to Text: Novelization, the Hidden Continent." The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 226-38.
Jan Baetens, Jan, and Marc Lits, eds. La Novellisation: Du film au livre / Novelization: From Film to Novel. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004.
Larson, Randall D. Films Into Books. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1995.