Does the 'Fifty Shades' director choice hint at its leading man?

Yesterday, fans of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Gray rejoiced at one crew announcement, while still holding out for news about who will play the leading man and lady in the erotic romance. Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed the 2009 film Nowhere Boy about the young John Lennon, will direct. She's

married to Aaron Taylor-Johnson (they met when she directed him in Nowhere Boy). Aaron is no stranger to playing a romantic lead--he was Vronsky in Anna Karenina last year and shows off his six-pack abs in the upcoming Kick-Ass 2. There is a chance that Aaron could be believable as Christian Grey, who seduces recent college graduate Anastasia Steele. In the book, Grey is described as a wealthy, successful industrialist, which most people would see as someone in his thirties or forties, but he's actually much younger: THR puts his age at 27, which is confirmed by the fan Wiki for the book. Fifty Shades was originally Twilight fan fiction, which means that Grey was an unaging vampire who was young, but had hundreds of years to build up a fortune. But in the Seattle-set romance, maybe Grey is just the latest young tech millionaire. The young industrialist would go even younger if he were played by Aaron, who is just 23. But maybe the question is beside the point. At least historically, it hasn't been great for many couples to film intimate scenes together: Kate Winslet split from director Sam Mendes not long after the emotionally raw Revolutionary Road, and Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise divorced not long after they wrapped Eyes Wide Shut together. That being said, the Taylor-Johnson relationship itself is a bit unusual: Sam is in her forties, and met Aaron when he was just 18. They married last year and have two children together. Sam is a former video artist whose projects include Crying Men, a series of photographs of celebrities in tears.

The Focus features production may not have cast its stars yet, but it's being shepherded by producers Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti, who shared an Oscar nomination for The Social Network. De Luca has also received an Oscar nomination for Moneyball. Kelly Marcel, whose picture about the clash between Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, Saving Mr. Banks, comes out this December, is still a bit of an unknown in terms of her screenwriting style. Still, the producing and directing team, as well as the writer, all suggest that Fifty Shades of Grey has pulled the right ingredients together--now it's just a matter of cooking it to perfection.

Hot novel 'Fifty Shades of Grey' may be turned into a movie

Forget Twilight. The latest female-driven literary sensation is Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic romance novel that has sold 250,000 copies to date--most of them in discreet e-book form. Now the literary agent of the property is having meetings with major Hollywood studios in preparation for a rights auction. The novel centers on the sexual relationship between a young entrepreneur and a college student who interviews him for her school paper. The novel has become particularly popular among mothers, where recommendations and discussion of the book have become a hot topic. But could Hollywood make an adaptation of a book that's so racy? Twilight, after all, had just one kiss in the first book in the series. The same can't be said for Fifty Shades of Grey.

A friend who loves to download romance novels on her Kindle reports that Fifty Shades of Grey is actually one of the tamer novels in that genre, which may explain why the New York Times describes the book as a crossover success, luring in readers who typically don't read erotica. In its favor, the novel has been something of a viral success. This isn't something that has been forced on readers, but rather something they have embraced and recommended to their friends. It's only recently been picked up by a more mainstream publisher. Shockingly, the original novel started out on a a Twilight fan fiction site. It was spotted by a small publisher, reworked, and was turned into a trilogy. Boding well for the series' success, it's already getting tons of hype with only the first novel published.

Bestselling books don't always catch on at the box office. Another "mommy" film of quite a different variety, Sarah Jessica Parker's I Just Don't Know How She Does It, fell totally flat onscreen. For many busy people, finding time to squeeze in a little reading is a lot different than finding time to see a movie. Could the romance scenes work better on the page rather than on the screen? Whatever studio picks up the property will be moving into less-charted territory. Sexually explicit movies tend to be the province of the arthouse, not the multiplex. Even then, they aren't very common. With so much of Hollywood stuck in the rut of the same-old, I applaud the studio that takes a risk and bets that Fifty Shades of Grey will be a sensation as it steps from the privacy of e-readers to the big screen.