Actor Colin Firth is featured on the cover of the U of M Press's reissued, movie tie-in novel. High-test former model, fashion guru and newly minted moviemaker Tom Ford has given an unexpected boost to the University of Minnesota Press. The movie "A Single Man," based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood, is being released nationally Dec. 11 and is expected to open in the Twin Cities Dec. 25. In anticipation, U of M Press did a hurry-up printing of the paperback novel with a cover showing film star Colin Firth, who plays protagonist George Falconer in the movie. The Press, which owns rights to much of the Isherwood backlist, originally sought to use a photo of Firth and Julianne Moore, who plays George's BFF in the movie, but that plan was nixed by Ford, who approved the solo shot of Firth. Some gay observers have criticized film distributor Weinstein Company for playing down the movie's gay angle in posters and trailers that highlight Firth and Moore seen together. See movie posters and blog comment here. The U of M Press printed 27,000 copies of the new paperback edition, which is on sale for $15.95 in bookstores nationwide. If the movie takes off and gets its anticipated Oscar buzz, the Press is poised to print more copies, said publicist Heather Skinner. Already it is number 2,000 in the rankings at amazon.com, "one of the highest rankings ever for one of our books," Skinner said. People going to the novel for the first time may decide for themselves whether the movie (Ford is producer, director and co-screenwriter) was a faithful adaptation of Isherwood's original. The Press first reissued Isherwood's 1964 novel, one of his best-known, in 2001, and has kept it in print since then. It also has reissued most of Isherwood's other novels in paperback editions. Maggie Sattler and Daniel Ochsner of the Press did the movie-version cover design, and there is also a new website with movie tie-ins, a trailer, community news forum and a reader's group guide. "This was a real stroke of luck for us," said Skinner.