In case you missed it, Smash Pictures has made a Fifty Shades of Grey porn parody. Why did they need to make a porn parody of something that is already erotica? Well, because Universal Pictures has licensed the movie rights to Fifty Shades of Grey for their own movie adaptation, but planned as rated NC-17. The smaller studio was originally countersuing, but has just dropped its suit.
Which is good news for folks who write and enjoy fanfiction. Or for everybody who posts anything online, really, because their counter argument was that since Fifty Shades of Grey was initially publicly posted online as Twilight fanfiction, it was automatically part of the public domain.
Smash Pictures has settled with Universal, and agreed to pay the larger studio a “confidential” amount of money for their troubles, as well as receiving a permanent injunction on ever distributing their XXX “parody” adaptation (guaranteeing that it will become the Holy Grail of rare footage quite soon). The production was not apparently much of a parody, according to their own executive, Stuart Wall:
Since they are going to make a mainstream [film] of the books too, dabbling in the adult world, we’re choosing to go with a XXX adaption which will stay very true to the book and its S&M-themed romance.
While I admit to being amused by Smash Pictures claim that since Masters of the Universe, the fanfic that eventually became Fifty Shades, was a derivative work posted publicly on the internet, Universal did not actually have any rights to the story, I was amused at least partly by the chutzpah required to actually attempt to make such an argument fly in a court of law. Fan fiction fans and writers can rest easy knowing that such an argument did not, in fact, fly.
Meanwhile, E. L. James is publishing a new book. Well, actually it’s a journal called “Inner Goddess,” for readers and aspiring writers to… write in. I’m going to end this post now, because that is a joke that writes itself.
(via The Hollywood Reporter.)
