New York Times Best Seller list and stayed there for six weeks. Simon Templar or James Bond are examples of media franchises that have been popular for more than one generation. When the feature film The Saint was released in 1997 the creator of this character (Leslie Charteris) had already been dead for four years. Hence its novelization had to be written by another author. Ian Fleming on the other hand had official successors who wrote contemporary "Post-Fleming" James Bond novels. During his tenure John Gardner was consequently chosen to write the novelization of Licence to Kill in 1989 and also the novelization of GoldenEye in 1995. John Gardner found his successor in Raymond Benson who wrote besides several original Bond novels three novelizations including The World Is Not Enough. Comics While comic books such as the series Classics Illustrated have often provided adaptations of novels, novelizations of comics are relatively rare. Video games Video games are novelized in the same manner as films. While gamers might enjoy playing a certain action scene for hours, the buyers of a novelization might be bored soon if they merely read about such a scene. Consequently, the writer will have to cut down on the action. Authors Novelization writers are often also accomplished original fiction writers, as well as fans of the works they adapt, which helps motivate them to undertake a commission that is generally compensated with a relatively low flat fee. Alan Dean Foster, for example, said that, as a fan, "I got to make my own director's cut. I got to fix the science mistakes, I got to enlarge on the characters, if there was a scene I particularly liked, I got to do more of it, and I had an unlimited budget. So it was fun". Writing skill is particularly needed for challenging situations common to writing novelizations of popular media, such as lack of access to information about the film, last-minute script changes and very quick turnaround times. Collins had to write the novelization of In the Line of Fire in nine days. Although novelizations tend to have a low prestige, and are often viewed as "hackwork", several critically acclaimed literary authors have written novelizations, including, Arthur Calder-Marshall, William Kotzwinkle and Richard Elman. Best-selling author Ken Follett, early in his career, also wrote a novelization, and so did Isaac Asimov, later in his career. While increasingly also a