Fourteen years have gone by since director Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi horror film Splice (watch it HERE) reached theatres – and now Fangoria has broken the news that Splice is finally getting the novelization treatment! This novelization has been written by  Claire Donner, “New York City and online branch director of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, who has written essays for Severin Films’ releases of Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore, The Sect, and The Church“, and is coming our way from Encyclopocalypse Publications, the company that’s also behind such novelizations as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Redneck Zombies, Re-Animator, Wishmaster, Fright Night, and more.

Scripted by Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant, and Doug Taylor, Splice had the following synopsis: Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast hope to achieve fame by splicing animal DNA to create hybrids for medical use at the company N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research and Development). Their work has yielded Fred and Ginger, two large vermiform creatures intended as mates for each other.

The film stars Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, and David Hewlett.

Donner had this to say about the novelization: “I did not add anything new to the course of events in Splice, but the film provides so much room to explore psychology and memory that I’d like to think the novelization will feel fresh and provocative for fans. Vincenzo flatters his audience by never saying too much, allowing for some amount of collaboration between the viewer’s imagination and the nuanced performances of the cast. My challenge was to engage with the story’s tantalizing mysteries without totally violating them; in a lot of ways, Splice is about privacy and the emotional boundaries that its characters cannot or will not cross. Some of what I have fleshed out was derived from unfilmed scenes in a preliminary version of the script, but this was really in the service of creating convincing inner worlds for the characters. It would be too easy to say that Clive and Elsa are driven by hubris, or a craving for knowledge that undermines their own humanity. All the stock motivations of a Frankenstein story are joined here by something more profoundly personal. For example, the film makes insinuations about Elsa’s childhood, which she is apparently unable to discuss even with her beloved partner, that are just as disturbing as any of the proper horror elements. It was really important for me to delve into this, to get to the heart of what kind of person she is, to hopefully complement the complex screen depiction of this individual.“

More from Donner can be found at the Fangoria link. Her work on the novelization met with Natali’s approval, as he tweeted, “Claire Donner has written a deeply psychological and perverse novelization of Splice. I loved it.”

Copies of the Splice novelization are available for pre-order through the Encyclopocalypse Publications website. The release date is August 20th. Will you be picking up a copy? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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