Whether you roll your eyes whenever your mom urges you to “just give it a chance,” or you’ve recently gotten “Christian Grey” tattooed to your left breast, chances are you’ve at least heard of the recent erotic phenomena known as Fifty Shades of Grey. Now that we’ve established the fact that you don’t live under a rock, I think it’s safe to assume you may have heard of Bret Easton Ellis as well, author of such harrowing works as American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction (If not, it’s called Google, people!). So imagine my surprise when I heard that Ellis recently threw his hat in the ring for adapting the best-selling erotic novel for a screenplay.
Saturday morning, the author tweeted “I’m putting myself out there to write the movie adaptation of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ …” Later that evening, Ellis basically spelled out his serious intent when he wrote: “Completely committed to adapting Fifty Shades of Grey. This is not a joke. Christian Grey and Ana: potentially great cinematic characters.” He also noted that he already contacted his agent about his intentions.
Ellis referred to the wealthy protagonist Christian Grey as a “writer’s dream,” and even went as far as to suggest actors and directors he already has in mind, from filmmaker David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Mind, Cosmopolis) to direct, Scarlett Johansson or Kristen Stweart as Ana and Ryan Gosling and Alexander Skarsgard as potential actors to play Christian. I don’t know about you, but after the initial sense of “WTF?” wore off, this idea definitely piqued my interest…
