Intramedial and Intermedial Adaptations in the Novelizations of Interstellar and Jumper

Abstract

This study aims at discussing how novels such as Greg Keyes’s Interstellar (2014), and Steven Gould’s Jumper: Griffin’s Story (2007) verbally construct a “transmedia storytelling” process (Jenkins, 2006) between literature and the films they transpose from the screen to the pages, namely Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) and Doug Liman’s Jumper (2008), respectively. The analysis, thus, centers on how both tie-in books operate diegetic, narratological, and psychological transformations (Baetens, 2018) on preexisting cinematic material. The discussion suggests that Keyes’s novel reworks the screenplay in an intramedial adaptation while making creative contributions to the story in narratological and psychological terms. Gould’s novelization, however, uses image as the generator, in an intermedial adaptation, to promote the verbal and psychological “reincarnation” of characters and to expand the diegetic universe. The study provides some grounds to support the contention that novelizations, through their interactive relation with new media, expand the scope and versatility of the novel as a genre.