Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Cast Rumors & News: Producers Talk Charlie Hunnam, Casting and NC-17 Rating
Fifty Shades of Grey finally has their leads in Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson and will begin filming in Vancouver on Dec. 2. Recently, producer Dana Brunetti sat down to talk about the film's casting, satisfying fans and a possible NC-17 cut.
Fifty Shades of Grey has been plagued with casting mishaps from fan backlash, petitions and the departure of Charlie Hunnam and his subsequent replacement with Dornan. These were things, however, for which the filmmakers were prepared.
"No matter who we cast, people were gonna be angry about it, and then we obviously had the one that we cast that ultimately didn't work out," Brunetti told Collider. "We have to meet the ideas of the fans to an extent and make them happy-although you're not gonna make them happy because they're thinking of somebody else in their mind, and I always thought it would be better if we went with somebody unknown so then everyone can discover them together. That's where I really think we are now with Jamie and Dakota."
Fans must keep in mind that filmmakers did not have an endless list of actors. Not every star is daring enough to be part of the sadomasochist film adaptation of E.L. James' erotic novel (Emma Watson even laughed at the idea).
"You have to get actors that really want to do it as well, and that was a really difficult process because a lot of them didn't want to do it just because of what they either thought that it would require or what it will require, or what it will make them into," Brunetti said. "It's gonna make them into huge stars but known of a certain thing. So some actors might not be able to break out of that in their career when they wanna do other projects either in between the productions of the [Fifty Shades] films or beyond the films."
Another easy way to anger fans of the book is to stray too far away from the novel, which may be particularly difficult for Fifty Shades of Grey.
"For any book it's distilling all of the moments in the book that are either fan favorites or pivotal that you have to have in there, and how you tie that all up into a two hour movie is not the easiest job," Brunetti said. "That's any book, and this one has all the inner monologue of Anastasia where you learn a lot about her from her Inner Goddess. Obviously we can't, otherwise the whole movie would be all voiceover. So that was a big problem, how we were gonna deal with that as far as the script and still convey a lot of that without voiceover."
So just how XXX will this hyper sexual movie be?
"It'll be R, obviously it has to be R," Brunetti said. "This is just my opinion, and this doesn't mean this is going to happen, but I always thought it would be really cool if we released the R version and then we had an NC-17 version that we released a few weeks later. So everybody could go and enjoy the R version, and then if they really wanted to see it again and get a little bit more gritty with it then have that NC-17 version out there as well. It'd be great for the studio too because they'd get a double dip on the box office... What we're kind of hearing from the fans is they want it dirty. They want it as close as possible [to the book]. We want to keep it elevated but also give the fans what they want."
Both an R-rated and NC-17 version of Fifty Shades of Grey are likely to bring out protesters, as racy movies tend to do, but Brunetti is confident in his team and what they can produce.
"We've been able to attract fantastic team as far as our department heads, everyone that's gotten involved have very good resumes," Brunetti said. "Which I think is shocking to a lot of people who label it 'mommy porn' or say 'it's gonna be trash,' I think the team that we're assembling should be already deafening that."
Fifty Shades of Grey will be released Feb. 13, 2015.