"Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...

[Robert A. Rosenberg]

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.