Literary adaptations and film tie-in book covers in the context of contemporary publishing and film production: A preliminary study based on Polish screen adaptations on selected SVoD platforms

Abstract

From the very first fiction productions, literature has always been a source of inspiration for the film industry, but also a ready-made material for screenplays. The potential inherent in adaptations is also increasingly recognised by SVoD platforms, which are deeply penetrating the publishing market in search of titles that can satisfy subscriber demand. The current intensification of efforts by both film
makers and publishers to adapt literary texts is described in the first part of this article. The second part presents the results of the author’s own research, offering a quantitative overview of Polish screen adaptations available on internationally accessible streaming services. The third part is an attempt to characterise, also on the basis of the author’s own study, this visible form of convergence between the literary and cinematic worlds, as manifested in the use of film tie-in book covers. According to the collected data, such publisher activities were observed in 75% of
Polish film and series adaptations of the last decade available on streaming.