What drew the cream of Hollywood to a soft-core porn story that began life as Twilight fan fiction? It wasn’t (just) the money, because these people can always get work. As did producers Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti, who made The Social Network and Captain Phillips Mark Bridges, the costume designer who won an Oscar for The Artist and revered composer Danny Elfman. Yet McGarvey, whose film credits include Anna Karenina and Atonement, signed on. “It wasn’t a film that I wanted to do particularly.” “I have a 14-year-old daughter, and I wonder about the images and the stories that we send out,” he says. I’d do everything in my power that she doesn’t, but what can I do?” Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey was initially reluctant to take on the story. “I don’t want to see the movie,” says Dornan, whose kid was born during filming. Nobody gets raped in Fifty Shades, and all the physical acts are consensual, but a romance about the possession of a virginal college student by a more powerful, older guy that involves her having to bend to his every whim, call him “sir” and get beaten in the process could be accused of glamorizing a deeply unhealthy relationship. In the U.K., no one under 18 will be able to see it. Similarly, the movie’s R rating has been denounced as too loose by antipornography groups in the U.S.

The book amassed an impressively catholic group of critics: committed feminists, committed Christians, committed users of grammatical English and even committed practitioners of BDSM. And an ever growing list of rich older men are being accused of sexual impropriety with women who were clearly their underlings. Statistics on sexual assault in the military are raising alarms. The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus rape culture, will arrive in theaters a month after Fifty Shades opens. 27, two former Vanderbilt University football players were convicted of raping a fellow student, the latest in a string of troubling incidents at colleges. Now.īut the film is being released just as a legion of stories have made headlines about the sexual violence young women are prey to. Clearly, the book’s fans feel they have delayed gratification long enough. Every scrap of information that has leaked out about the project has sent shudders through the Internet. Opening-weekend revenue is expected to be at least $45 million, which is about what the movie is reported to have cost. Preordered-ticket sales have been sharp, faster than for any R-rated movie in the history of the site Fandango. It’s not surprising then that the movie is one of the most anticipated of the year.

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