Fifty Shades of Grey: The Motion Picture will be coming to cinemas everywhere next year. I don’t think it’s the worst bit of erotic fiction ever written. It is, though, very far from being the best.
You know what spanking fiction book would make a better movie than Fifty Shades of Grey? Well any of the five books I’ve listed below for a start. Each one of them is better written, more erotic and a good deal more fun than The Adventures of Ana and Christian,
As well as speculating about what the resulting films would look like, I’ve included casting suggestions for the books’ heroes and heroines and thrown in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it celebrity cameo for good measure. (Think Cate Blanchett in Hot Fuzz or Vanilla Ice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.)
You may, of course, violently disagree with my interpretations. Particularly if you actually wrote the book in question. In which case, feel free to shout “STOP READING MY BOOKS ALL WRONG YOU IDIOT!” at me in the comments.
This is a bit of a tricky one. Obviously if one was going to turn all Renee Rose’s books into movies (and frankly one should), it would make more sense to start with the first of the Westerfield books – The Westerfield Affair. But if I am going to select just one, then I want it to be the third book in the series, The Darlington Incident.
The blend of spy story and romance with its concealed identities, secret plots and poisoning attempts would be fantastic on the big screen. You can just imagine the trailer – impressive stately home, doors being masterfully flung open, close-ups of leather boots striding purposefully across ballroom floors, big swishy coat, even swishier riding crop and then our first proper view of Lord Darlington as he turns to the raven haired, birthmarked beauty at his side and says “You lied to protect a man you believe to be a thief? Someone ought to take you over his knee.”
Credits
Hero (Lord Darlington) – Richard Armitage
Heroine (Miss Eliza Hunt) – Megan Fox
Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It-Celebrity-Cameo – Julia McKenzie (the current Miss Marple) as Lady Winters, fellow guest at the ball.
There’s a ton of wonderfully evoked atmosphere in Cursed Waters – oppressive heat gives way to violent hurricanes and the sense that bad things are a-happening in the beautiful holiday resort of Ocean Pointe on the Jersey Shore. All the while our heroes are busy reigniting an old love affair with sexy spankings and spanky sex.
The sense of menace builds slowly as the shambling figures in the torrential rain begin to reveal themselves for what they really are. Until finally we reach a crescendo of full-on Zombie attacks being repelled by carefully aimed breadboards, squirt guns full of lemon juice and some super-powerful long-suppressed voodoo magic powers.
Credits
Hero (Trevor) – Chris Pine
Heroine (Roxy) – Cristin Milioti (the mother from “How I met your Mother”)
Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It-Celebrity-Cameo – All of ‘One Direction’, unrecognisable underneath several inches of zombie make-up
Clearly I think zombies are Box Office gold because the they turn up in the next book on my list as well. It’s quite impressive that there are two noteworthy examples of novels with both both zombies and spankings as it is, quite frankly, a criminally neglected genre crossover. Paige Tyler’s take on the subject matter is somewhat different from Casey McKay’s in that the hero of the story, Drake, is himself a part-time zombie. He is the victim of a curse that he had put on him when he was a sexy, sexist, Wall Street arsehole although happily, he doesn’t seem to lose any cognitive function when he gets all zombiefied. The guy might look like he’s been dead a week but at least he’s not all “brains… brains…” and stumbling over furniture.
To be honest, this book is pretty light on spankings but I’m prepared to overlook that given the cute Beauty and the Beast-esque tale of redemption, the sexiness of two heroes, the scariness of the bad zombies who turn up later in the book and the amazing plot twist which I totally did not see coming and which flipped my whole understanding of the earlier part of the book on its head. It’s the sort of pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you moment that you’d get in a M Night Shyamalan movie.
Credits
Hero (Drake) – James Franco
Heroine (Simone) – Eva Green
Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It-Celebrity-Cameo – Richard Dawkins as a spiritual healer during the Drake-tries-to-get-help-from-alternative-therapists montage
When I wrote my
Amazon review for this book I said “Sidney Swann has great turn of phrase and the knack of writing scenes that you can visualise as though you were there, even when it’s something as simple as a book being hurled across a room. In fact, this book would make a great movie. Someone should get on that right now!”
That was almost three months ago. And has anybody made a movie of Sidney Swann’s wittily inventive steampunk romance yet? No they bloody well haven’t. Come on Hollywood producers, pull your finger out. What on earth are you doing with your time if it’s not going through my Amazon reviews looking for opportunities to fulfill my every whim?
This fabulous bit of steampunky sexiness is just made for the big screen. I want nineteenth century robot cats. I want steam-powered submersibles. I want a sexy half-human, half-robot man to take a beautiful, brilliant, young female scientist over his knee and give her a damn good thrashing, Is that too much to ask? Is it?
Credits
Hero (Dr Sebastian Cromwell) – Daniel Craig
Heroine (Dr Gladys DeWalt) – Mila Kunis
Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It-Celebrity-Cameo – Alan Rickman as the voice of Simeon the robot
Maren Smith – Kaylee’s Keeper
Kaylee’s Keeper is all about colours. Not just about colours, obviously. It’s also about spankings and submissives and bullwhips and group sex and violet wands and people generally getting their every kinky whim catered for at a world-class sex resort. Even the kinky whims they weren’t even sure they had. Especially those in fact.
Colours are fundamental throughout the story, though. They are flagged on the wristbands that all of the Castle’s participants wear – pink for schoolgirls, yellow for maids, green for ponies, blue for the nursery and so on. Kaylee’s Keeper on the big screen could take these colours and really have fun with them If you have ever seen Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, you’ll remember the rooms in that were all colour themed – the green kitchen, the red dining room. You could do a similar thing here: take the predefined colours and lavishly apply them to the set dressing and the lighting of each area of The Castle. The pinks of the classroom giving way to the greens of the stables as Kaylee moves between the spheres trying to find her true spiritual home in the Castle’s geography.
The eye-popping visuals should be rendered in as high a resolution as technology will allow. Hell, while we’re at it, let’s make it 3D as well. I think the world is totally ready for a mainstream 3D BDSM sex film.
The outfits of the castle’s particiants should likewise match the colour scheme with one important exception. The Master of the Castle himself wears a fine nineteenth century black three-piece suit with an elegant white shirt. His outfit should remain the same wherever he is in the castle. Master Marshall should be the one unchanging constant in Kaylee’s kinky wonderland.
Credits
Hero (Master Marshall) -Alex Pettyfer
Heroine (Kaylee) -Jennifer Lawrence
Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It-Celebrity-Cameo – Tom Cruise wearing his carnival mask from
Eyes Wide Shut being fellated by some guy in the Rainbow Room
So there you go, movie makers, five fantastic book just perfect for anyone looking to jump on the post-Fifty Shades bandwagon. Audiences will be crying out for sexy spanky plotlines, you mark my words. Strike while the BDSM iron is hot.
Hell, if the professionals don’t take it on, maybe I should take it to Kickstarter and try to raise the money myself. That guy got $53,000 just to make some potato salad. How hard can it be to raise a few tens of millions to make a the best big-budget Hollywood blockbuster with spankings ever made?
