Fifty Shades of Grey may have racked up more than $550 million at the box office, inspired women to an increase in sexy internet searches of a whopping 200%, and even made its way into the classroom of a West Virginia high school, but there are still a few people left out there who haven't seen the movie. And Fifty Shades screenwriter Kelly Marcel is one of them.
"I just don't feel like I can watch it without feeling some pain about how different it is to what I initially wrote," Marcel explains on author Bret Easton Ellis' podcast, Vulture reports. "I very much wanted to do something different with the screenplay, and when I spoke to the studio and the producers and made that quite clear, they were very enthusiastic about that," says the scribe. "I wanted to take the inner goddess out, and all of Ana's inner monologue... I wanted to remove a lot of the dialogue. I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn't so much talking in it."
But after delivering a first draft of the script, Marcel realized that the supposed freedom the studio had given her was "utter, utter bullshit." According to Marcel, author E.L. James quickly shut the screenwriter down, saying "This isn't what I want it to be, and I don't think this is the film the fans are looking for." The two then wrote side-by-side, and "in the end, I think we ended up with a draft that was a halfway compromise," Marcel says.
As for still not having seen the completed film, "My heart really was broken by that process," Marcel explains. "I don't see it out of any kind of bitterness or anger or anything like that."
In light of her revelations, it comes as no surprise that Marcel will not be writing the script for the next installment of the steamy series. E.L. James' husband, Niall Leonard, is taking over screenwriting duties for the film, which will reportedly have a more sinister, thriller-like vibe (just check out this sexy/creepy — sexily creepy? — teaser video). With or without Marcel, it doesn't take a Hollywood insider to predict that Fifty Shades Darker just might be breaking some box office records come 2017. We'll certainly be watching.
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