At 09:51 9/18/95, Steven Levy wrote:

No chance. The problem for me isn't that someone wanted to call a movie Hackers but that it causes confusion in that for eleven years there has been a preexisiting work by that name. There is a novelization of the screenplay now in paperback, so when if a friend recommends that you buy Hackers, you'll probably buy that one. (especially since Dell is determined to do as little as possible for my own book).

Normally when there can be confusion between a movie title and an existent book title (in that the movie could be a dramatization of the book based on general subject matter), the movie gets title clearance, pays a token release fee to the book's author, and puts up a title clearance credit in the movie credits. For an example of this, check out Bladerunner (based on "Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?" not "Bladerunner" [which was by a different author]) credits where the prior uses of the title were mentioned.