14 DAY TRIAL // “Fifty Shades of Grey” comes out in theaters on Valentine’s Day 2015, which means that, until then, we’d better brace ourselves for a barrage of details, rumors, and questions. A possibility that’s being considered, producer Dana Brunetti says, is to have 2 versions of the film.
Those of you who read E.L. James' original “Fifty Shades” trilogy know that a film that would stay true to the story would have to be NC-17 rated, without a doubt. However, such a rating limits considerably any film’s chances at the box office, being considered MPAA’s kiss of death by industry experts.
So, why not have two different versions of the same movie come out at the same time, Brunetti theorizes in a new interview with Collider.
“It’ll be R, obviously it has to be R. 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,” he says.
“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],” the producer continues.
Of course, the movie studio and the MPAA are the powers that be who decide which route “Fifty Shades” will take but, at least on paper, Brunetti’s idea sounds great because it would please both the fans and the studio people, who would get the chance to make double the money from the get-go.
Then again, if things were this easy, everybody would be doing it and, we don’t know about you but we haven’t heard of that many films getting double release, with different ratings.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson as leads, and is directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.