Hollywood's Newest Money-Making Scheme Is... Books

A few months later, she got her wish. In December, Faber & Faber published the Barbie screenplay as a 138-page paperback, with full-color photos and a new introduction by the film's co-writers, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. "I went round to all the bookshops and just happened to find it," Bonner recalls. Meanwhile, in a real-life literary Barbenheimer, her father bought the Oppenheimer screenplay - also via Faber & Faber, which has published most of Christopher Nolan's screenplays since 2001's Memento. "He's very much a history person, and he likes to read a lot," Bonner says of her dad.

Increasingly, blockbuster movies aren't just making an impact at the box office or on streaming. They're resonating at bookstores, too, many of which prominently displayed the Barbie and Oppenheimer screenplays last year as though they were buzzy new novels. The sales seem to justify this strategy. In August, Variety reported that the screenplay to Nolan's acclaimed biopic was selling out fast on Amazon.