This really is mostly about the book's author and not the upcoming movie. At least a year ago, I read a novel called Big Fish by Daniel Wallace. I enjoyed it quite a bit at the time. It is now being adapted for the screen by Tim Burton. I was pretty excited. I watched a preview for the film recently, and it said something like, "from the imagination of Tim Burton..." I got a bit peeved about this and thought to myself that this was ridiculous. Perhaps he adapted it and was directing it, but to claim it was from his imagination is ridiculous! The "based on the novel by Daniel Wallace" was somewhere toward the end of the preview in small letters. He barely seems credited... as if his writing the novel was insignificant to the movie. The preview made it seem like a pretty true adaptation. Is this common practice... to almost completely disregard that an author had something to do with the creation of the story? I realize that I lucked into discovering Daniel Wallace... and that he's not a huge name. I'm not asking that the movie's title be changed to Daniel Wallace's Big Fish or anything... like Stephen King gets. So who's to blame for this anyway? The advertising company? Tim Burton? I just think it's sad that he's being dismissed... Anyone ever read anything else by Daniel Wallace? I read Ray in Reverse as well... cool concept... decent read, but I have not yet read The Watermelon King.
Absolutely. If it isn't seen as significantly HELPING the marketing of the film, it's ignored. Even Stephen King was rarely credited as the author of Shawshank Redemption, for instance, because they didn't want people to think of it as a horror film. They even changed the name of the story. However, the phrase, "from the imagination of..." does seem to be a little extreme in dismissing the creator of the story. Perhaps Burton has really departed from the novel significantly.
It's very common. And his writing of the novel may be insignificant to the movie, but a movie being made from his novel certainly wasn't insignificant to his bank account.