FIFTY SHADES Meets …
Following the success of Fifty Shades of Grey at the box office, The Hollywood Reporter looks at four other erotic novels that are making their way to screens. All of them are still in the development phase, with no directors or actors attached, so they could use pitches. Below are our suggestions:
Crossfire series, Sylvia Day (Penguin Berkley; first in the series, Bared to You, above left, with cover riffing on the iconic Fifty Shades tie) — Set in an ad agency, rights were acquired two years ago by Lionsgate for a TV series, so, of course, it’s “Fifty Shades meets Mad Men.”
Beautiful Bastard, Christina Lauren (S&S/Gallery) — About a hardworking, ambitious assistant and her difficult boss, it’s “Fifty Shades meets Working Girl.” (note the book cover makes reference to BOTH a tie and cuff links).
After, Anna Todd (S&S/Gallery) — This boy-band fan fiction was signed for a film adaptation by Paramount Pictures last fall. It will inevitably be pitched as “Fifty Shades meets One Direction” but a warning, when this “watt-pad sensation” was published in book form, it did not have the success of Shades of Grey, so it may turn out to be “Fifty Shades meets John Carter.”
On the Island, Tracey Garvis Graves, (Penguin Plume) — A romance about a woman who is shipwrecked with the teen age boy she has been tutoring. It is “Fifty Shades meets Cast Away.”