Adaptive executives say their scavenging approach gives them an advantage over bigger studios that are competing for fresh scripts from writers who are in demand, or wrestling over the same picked-over comic book franchises.

Adaptive controls the intellectual property across all media, and uses the books to promote the films, which it hopes in turn will help book sales. The novels also offer a relatively inexpensive way to market-test high-concept stories — those with a simple, basic hook — and build an audience for a new franchise, Adaptive’s executives say.

Booksellers have warmed to the concept. The company recently announced an unusual partnership with Barnes & Noble, which is giving prominent placement to Adaptive’s titles in its 640 stores and has exclusive rights to sell the books for the first six months.

With the release of “Coin Heist,” which is now in postproduction, Adaptive faces its first big trial with audiences and critics.

The project has a long and tortured history going back to 1998, when a screenwriter, William Osborne, wrote a script titled “The Hole With the Mint,” an action-comedy about a British schoolteacher who recruits his former students to rob the Royal Mint. He sold the idea at the first pitch meeting and wrote three drafts, only to have it languish in the studio vault for 15 years.

Then, in 2013, Adaptive bought it as part of a bulk deal for 25 moribund Miramax scripts.

Adaptive executives took the script apart. They changed the setting and condensed it into a five-page narrative blueprint. They auditioned five writers before hiring Elisa Ludwig to reimagine the story as a young-adult novel set in a Philadelphia prep school.

After the novel was published, they brought in a new screenwriter, Emily Hagins. She adapted it into a movie about four students who team up to rob the Philadelphia Mint. (Producers are describing it in Hollywood-speak as “The Breakfast Club” meets “Ocean’s Eleven.”)