During its first two decades, French narrative cinema largely borrowed from the repertoires and practices of a flourishing mass literature. SCAGL, a 1908-established company, defined a new model, based on “popular classic” adaptations, at the very moment when theaters began to show less interest in those works. Notorious literary titles helped the advancement of feature film. A few years later, cinematographic societies turned more and more to contemporary literature. In the same vein, mass readership partly led to an interest in cinema: film novelizations were distributed in halls, then from 1915, widespread through press and books. Innovation came again from a sort of resurrection of old-fashioned serial stories. The economic synergy benefited the expansion of cinema towards a new potential spectatorship. Film novelization really played a complex role in acculturizing the new media.