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.