Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Fifty Shades of Grey: Suitable for Television Only?

First published on 9/26/2012

Another heartening sign that the people are smarter than the media comes from an article on booksnreview.com, which asks the question, "'Fifty Shades of Grey' Movie: Too Kinky for Film? Fans Rather See Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey on TV Show, HBO Series'.

Hell, yeah! Sometimes you see indie movies that do sexually challenging stuff right, but mainstream movie makers almost never get it right. They always tone the sexy way down. With 50 million in sales, the book clearly has huge potential to be either a monster movie a la "Gone with the Wind" or a franchise a la Star Wars. The studio heads are going to be so hot to protect their monster movie's profit potential that they are going to absolutely avoid doing anything too risky.

Remember the hash they made of "9 1/2 Weeks"? Of "Exit to Eden?" The only reason they didn't fuck up "Story of O" is that it was done by the French. So the odds on a good movie version of Fifty Shades? Low ... way fucking low.

TV cable channels like HBO and Spartacus, however ... different story. They have got some kickass writers and producers who have proven that they know how to handle the raunchy. Game of Thrones and Spartacus are some of the hottest mainstream sexual imagery going right now, combined with topnotch dramatic stories. This would be the best shot Fifty Shades has at a good film adaptation, but it's not happening. Going to be a freaking movie. And almost certainly, a fucking failure.

We shall see.

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