The MAN OF STEEL Movie Novelization

Greg Cox has been adapting novels and writing stories in other universes for twenty years. Over the past two decades, he has adapted Superman novels from comic book story-arcs, and has written movie adaptation for both Marvel comics (Daredevil) and DC comics (Dark Knight Rises) and everything in between for film (Underworld), TV (Warehouse 13), and even the web (Riese). I was given the opportunity to sit down with him and find out a little bit more about what it’s like to write for these worlds, and to hear more about his experience with Man of Steel, which is now available from our good friends at Titan Books.

Jonathan Seeliger: Based on your bibliography, you seem to be the go-to guy for novels in set-up universes, such as Star Trek, Buffy, CSI… How did you get started in that?

Greg Cox: Actually, I started on the other side of the desk. I was a full-time science fiction editor working for Tor books for years and was editing media tie-in novels for Tor. I edited the novelizations for Cutthroat Island, Freddie Kreuger’s New Nightmare, I did Mortal Kombat books, Zorro books, I was involved with the Conan books to some degree, and the thing about New York Publishing is it tends to be a very small, close-knit community – we all know each other, I knew all the other tie-in editors, they knew my interests, and honestly we all moonlight because you can’t make a living just in editing. So it started very slowly: “Hey Greg, we need a Catwoman story, do you think you can get us a Catwoman story by the weekend?” “Hey Greg we need a Deep Space 9 book, do you think you can get us one by July?” “No problem.” I gradually zigged from being a full-time editor working 9-5 who wrote novelizations to tie-ins on the side, to becoming a full-time freelance writer who writes tie-ins full-time while still doing a little editing on the side. I am still a consulting editor for Tor books.

JS: So what have you found the pros and cons to playing in someone else’s sandbox?

GC: A lot of it, honestly, is the nostalgia factor. My not-so-guilty secret is that I am a lifelong fanboy. I would be lining up to see the new Star Trek and the new Superman movie on opening night even if it wasn’t my job. I grew up on this stuff, I read it as a kid – I remember in junior high scribbling my own fanfic about my favorite superheroes and monsters in my loose leaf notebooks at recess – I didn’t even know the word fanfic back then but I knew what I was doing – and I’m still excited enough that when they say “hey Greg, do you want to write the novelization for the new Superman movie?” “Wow! This is so cool.” I was talking to my parents recently, and they remembered me being this weird kid who had pictures of Julie Newmar as Catwoman pinned up to his wall. “Gee, we always worried about this, wondering if you were ever going to amount to anything, and where all this crazy fan stuff was going to lead to.” But, you know, I am a lifelong fan of comic books and superheroes and Star Trek and whatnot, so there’s a part of me that gets really excited when they say to me “do you want to do a Warehouse 13 book?” “Oh boy!” It’s fun, you know? It’s still such a thrill to be associated with a major motion picture. It was actually last August that I flew out to Hollywood, met with the Warner Brothers people, read the script for Man of Steel, they showed me some of the production art, they showed me some of the costumes and props, which was fun. I enjoy writing these characters, and I like to think I have a good ear for the dialog and I know them. It also gives me an excuse to watch all this stuff and claim I’m doing work: “I’m sorry, honey, I have to watch three seasons of Leverage this week because I need to write a Leverage novel. I’m working, really I am!” That’s a lot of it – fannish enthusiasm and nostalgia.

JS: Is there anything you struggle with, going into the universes like Warehouse 13? I know for CSI, you mentioned you have to do a lot of research to make sure you get the science right, but for like Final Crisis or Warehouse 13 where it’s not a universe you grew up with, do you find any struggles when you’re writing these characters?

LEVERAGE by Greg Cox

GC: I’m really big in immersion, and once I sign on to do something, you know, I did a Leverage novel recently and I sat down and watched all three seasons in a week. By the end of it I knew Leverage backwards and forwards. It’s easy with Star Trek where you’ve got a 50-year history and I literally have bookshelves full of Klingon dictionaries and maps of the Federation and whatnot. Something newer, I need to rely more on the kindness of the nice movie and TV people where I can pick their brains to tell me more about their characters. When I did Warehouse 13, I had two long conference calls with the writers and producers of the show and they reviewed every draft of the outline manuscript. When I did the Underworld books, a couple of the screenwriters gave me their email addresses which I would hit them up on for questions on obscure points of Underworld lore and mythology. I talked to Kevin Grevioux (Raze) on the phone once for about a half hour about the backstory of his character. I try not to abuse this privilege, because they’re busy people who are busy making 100 million dollar movies, but if it’s something brand new – I also recently did a book based on Riese, which is a webseries but there’s like 9 episodes, each episode is like 9 minutes long so you can watch the entire series in an afternoon, but you don’t have 40 years of Star Trek episodes, so I was very heavily dependant on Ryan [Copple] and Kaleena [Kiff] who are the creators of Riese to get how it works: do you have gunpowder in your universe? Who’s this? How old is her little brother? Is he 12, is he 6? So it’s a collaborative process, which is the fun part, but I’m always trying to pry as much information as I can without making a pest of myself.

JS: Now, you had visited the Warner Brothers lot last August, and the movie just came out a couple weeks ago; how long does it usually take you to complete a novel?

GC: Yeah, I was not able to visit the actual set, I was hoping to see the Fortress of Solitude! For the Superman book, it was actually quite leisurely compared to the standards of other novelizations, the fact I was able to go out and read the script almost a year before the movie came out it was like “Wow, that’s luxurious!” I went out in August and read the script and visited the folks there, and I think I turned in the book around November. There was some more tinkering as the process went on and some back-and-forthing, but it usually only takes me one or two months to write a movie novelization. In part because remember for a novelization in particular, the screenwriter has already done a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of working out the plot and the dialog. I’m not pulling out my hair trying to figure out what happens next. I know what happens next, it’s all there in the script. I just have to figure out how to write it in prose and write a 300-page description of a movie I haven’t seen yet.

Greg Cox’s Movie Novelization for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

JS: Speaking of which, you did the novelization for The Dark Knight Rises. Because this was Man of Steel and it was kind of the same team, were you handpicked by the studio or the filmmakers? What’s the standard procedure on being selected for writing a novel?

GC: I have been doing this for a long time. I sold my first Batman story to DC comics back around the time of the second Tim Burton movie. So at this point I have a fairly good relationship with DC comics, the folks at Warner Brothers, at Titan Books, so you’d have to ask them why they chose me to do Man of Steel, but I assume it’s because we did Dark Knight Rises and it all went very smoothly, they know me, I know them, and I have been an editor and I have edited tie-in novels and novelizations, and you don’t want surprises. Why gamble? Use somebody you know. I know them, I’ve worked with them before, Steve Saffel, who was my editor on Man of Steel I’ve known for years, Josh Anderson who was the licensing guy at Warner Brothers I knew him from Dark Knight Rises. I like to think that they trust me at this point. (laughs)

JS: Having written the novelization for Final Crisis and 52, was this Superman from Man of Steel different from those previous incarnations or do you picture Superman as one character and he’s just having these different situations?

GC: I really didn’t have to switch gears on writing Man of Steel. You know, it’s a different continuity – I’m not going to have Superman as played by Henry Cavill thinking about Krypto, Lori Lemaris, the Justice League, and his adventures with the Legion of Super Heroes. But when I’m describing Superman it’s still Superman. When I’m describing Superman flying through the air, I didn’t feel like I was writing a different guy, I was writing just a different version of his life, a newer version of Superman who didn’t have 50 years of DC comics continuity behind him. He’s not thinking about Batman or Lori Lemaris the mermaid. I didn’t feel like I’m writing a completely different version of Superman – I’m still picturing pretty much the same guy in my head.

JS: So to take that a little bit further, when you’re writing a popular character from a movie, such as Superman from Man of Steel, do you picture Henry Cavill, or when you wrote Dark Knight Rises, do you picture Christian Bale, or do you just imagine “Clark Kent” or “Bruce Wayne”?

GC: I tried to soak up as much of the visuals of the movie as I can – I watched the trailer over and over and over again, I was reading every article I can find, so I wanted to describe the characters as they appear in the movie. Usually, quite often if I was writing a scene that was in the trailer, I would call up the trailer and watch the bus crash scene and in just those 15 seconds try to glean as much knowledge as I could. I remember sort of swearing that General Zod did not actually appear in the trailer, because I would have loved to have seen some footage of General Zod, who wasn’t in the early teaser trailers, it was all Clark on the fishing boat and Clark growing up in Smallville. I would’ve killed for a little bit more reference on the Kryptonian stuff.

JS: Given your familiarity with the mythology, the fact that you grew up a Superman fan and wrote those previous books, when you were reading the script what were your thoughts on the changes: the fact that there was no “mild-mannered reporter”, that Lois met Clark before he became Superman.

INFINITE CRISIS: The Novel by Greg Cox

GC: The first thing that actually hit me when I read the script for the first time: not “oh my Zod they changed that” but what wasn’t there: No Lex Luthor, no Kryptonite, no Jimmy Olson, no secret-identity shenanigans with Clark and Lois and Superman, and the fact that mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent doesn’t show up until the final scene of the movie. That didn’t throw me, I thought “oh, well this is interesting, this is going to be different,” because I’m a comic book fan and I’m used to continuity being revised every 10 years (laughs); I wrote the novelization of Infinite Crisis, I understand about the multiverse – Golden Age versus Silver Age versus Bronze Age, Earth-1, Earth-2. I didn’t find that confusing or disorienting, you know, growing up I had no problem reconciling the fact that the Tarzan in the Johnny Weissmullerr movies, the Tarzan in the 1960’s Gordon Scott movies, the one in the Gold Key comics, the one in the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, they were not all in the same continuity, but they were all Tarzan, just different takes. I’m very used to seeing different takes on different characters, this is just a brand new take. I’m old enough that I have lived through George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain, Tom Welling, Brandon Routh, and hey! One more Superman did not faze me.

JS: After watching the movie, what scene was the biggest departure from how you pictured it and what scene played out almost exactly as you envisioned it?

GC: The challenge is of course that I’m describing something in a movie I haven’t seen yet, and scripts tend to be very lean, they’re mostly dialog and action; the look of the thing is often left to the costume designers, the art directors, etc. The thing I was worried about was mostly the Kryptonian stuff and trying to get the look of the Kryptonian stuff right, because I know what Smallville looks like I know what Metropolis looks like… what does a Kryptonian Genesis Chamber look like? I’d seen some sketches but I was having to rely on my own imagination a lot. I think I got most of the Kryptonian stuff right, the one thing I did not visualize quite right was that sequence when Jor-El is telling Clark about the history of Krypton, and in the movie there’s that wonderful sort of living mural art deco heroics… that’s not at all how I visualized that, I described something different in the book. I remember them trying to describe to me what the special effects was going to look like when I was out talking to people in California, but that’s hard to visualize. When I finally saw the movie I was like “oh! That’s seriously cool! I wish I had seen this footage.” That was quite different from how I visualized in my head, though I liked the movie version better. (laughs)

JS: Did they play any clips for you when you went to the lot?

A prop from MAN of STEEL

GC: Because of the publication schedules, the movie was still being filmed when I was writing the book, and indeed a lot of the special effects stuff I’m sure was still being worked on in CGI labs somewhere. They had a gallery set up with all the pre-production artwork up on the walls, various props under glass, the Superman suit on a mannequin, which they called the “Fortress of Solitude”, and they’d let me into this room which was kept locked to walk around and look at the props and take notes for a couple hours and were also open to questions – I was picking people’s brains shamelessly: “okay, describe to me what the breather looks like” because I’ve read the script and the script describes things like the codex, or Lois gets the Kryptonian breather on her and this is a case where, even though I’m a lifelong Superman fan, my memory was no good because I can’t describe it the way it looked in old Silver Age comics, I couldn’t describe the way it looked in the Christopher Reeve movies, all the visuals are different so again I was very dependent on the nice people at the Warner Brothers office: “okay, what does the Codex look like?” The fact that the Codex looked like a skull with glyphs actually was not in the script, that was something described to me in a verbal conversation. “Oh that’s very interesting! Tell me more” you know constantly “Tell me more! Tell me more! One more question” like Colombo.

JS: I saw the movie first then read the novel, and there was one scene in particular – the Pediatrician scene – that was not in the movie at all, and reading it I really enjoyed it and was disappointed I did not get to have the visual aspect of it. How often when you watch the movie version of a book that you’ve written, do you feel a scene is missed or understand why they took it out?

GC: Well that’s always the experience… there was actually much less of that in Man of Steel and Dark Knight Rises than I’m used to. I mean, I novelized Daredevil: great chunks of that script were cut from the theatrical version. They had cut out entire characters and subplots. Actually, in the case of the pediatrician scene, I had been told in advance that scene had been cut out, but thankfully nobody asked me to cut it out of the book. Sometimes, you are told “that scene’s not in the movie, take it out of the book.” This time, it didn’t change anything, it didn’t contradict anything, and it’s kind of nice that you can keep an [edited] scene in the book, it’s sort of like bonus features. Plus, on a practical level, part of my job is taking a 140 page script and turning it into a 300 page book, so anything I can do to pad things out, flesh things out, I like including cut scenes into the novelizations if I can do so. I think I saw an interview with Goyer recently where he said that they were thinking of adding that pediatrician scene as a deleted scene on the DVD of Man of Steel somewhere down the road. So I guess they did film it.

JS: Reading the novel, I noticed lines like “up, up, and away” or “strange visitor from another planet” or “this looks like a job for Superman.” Did you throw those in just for fun or were you directed to do that?

Look, Up in the Sky!!!

GC: That was all me, that was me being cute, that was me being nostalgic. How can you write a Superman book and not? I try not to overdo it or get too carried away; I can’t remember if I actually used “faster than a speeding bullet” anywhere in the book, but it’s Superman – if I can sneak in “strange visitor from another planet” or “mild-mannered reporter”, I will. I did have some restraint! At one point (I actually wrote this) I had Lois thinking “if you can read my mind” and then I thought, and I stared at it, and okay, that’s going too far, that’s a little too cute, a little too jokey, and I cut that out. But I couldn’t resist throwing in some nostalgic bits of Superman lore. Actually, while I was writing the book, I was watching the old Fleischer animated cartoons in the evening for inspiration, so I was inundated in past and future Superman. The Once and Future Man of Steel.

JS: When you write about a character’s internal monologue or motivation, does that come just from you reading the script, or are you ever given the chance to pick the minds of the director or screenwriter or actor before you start writing?

GC: Not really. I did that once. I talked to one of the actors in the Underworld movies and picked his brain for a while about his character, but that’s unusual. Usually if the script is well written, you know what the characters are feeling, it’s just a matter of me putting it on the page. Instead of letting the actor convey the emotion, because I can’t show Henry Cavill’s face, I have to go into his head. Usually it’s not hard, it’s all about putting yourself in the situation, how would people react? When young Clark finds out he’s an alien from another planet, he’s going to be freaked out. When Martha Kent finds Lois Lane on her doorstep, she’s going to be nervous and worried. I wasn’t very confused about what the characters were thinking, it was pretty obvious, it was just trying to convey that in prose without the benefit of a movie soundtrack or the actors’ faces and epressions and body language. I didn’t have to waste a lot of time thinking “what is Zod thinking now?” Zod is mad! Zod wants to rebuild Krypton and Superman is getting in the way!

Ma and Pa Kent are now Mom and Dad in this version of the Superman story

One last thing I did want to mention is that Jonathan and Martha are not Ma and Pa Kent in this movie, they’re Mom and Dad. I actually caught myself, I was halfway through writing the book when I realized I kept referring to them as Ma and Pa Kent and I thought “wait a minute, do they ever actually call them Ma and Pa Kent in this movie?” No, I went back to the script, and it’s always Jonathan and Martha or it’s “my father” or it’s “Mom”, “Dad” and well, no, this is 2013, he’s not going to call them Ma or Pa, he’s going to call them Mom and Dad. So thank Zod for “Search and Replace” I went through and took out all the Ma’s and Pa’s

JS: Now I’ll have to see it again and keep an eye out for that! Greg, thank you for taking the time to sit with me.

GC: I’ve been waiting a year to talk about this movie, so no problem!

Author Greg Cox

GREG COX is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels and short stories.  He wrote the official movie novelizations of MAN OF STEEL,THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, DAREDEVIL, GHOST RIDER, DEATH DEFYING ACTS, and the first three UNDERWORLD films, as well the novelizations of four popular DC Comics miniseries, INFINITE CRISIS, 52,  COUNTDOWN and FINAL CRISIS.  In addition, he has written books and short stories based on such popular series as ALIAS, THE AVENGERS, BATMAN, BUFFY, C.S.I., FARSCAPE, FANTASTIC FOUR, THE 4400, THE GREEN HORNET, IRON MAN, LEVERAGE, THE PHANTOM, ROSWELL, STAR TREK, TERMINATOR, UNDERWORLD, WAREHOUSE 13, XENA, X-MEN and ZORRO.

The MAN OF STEEL Movie Novelization