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"      Plenty of novels throughout history have been deemed un-filmable \u00E2\u20AC\u201C and only a handful have actually borne out the label \u00E2\u20AC\u201C but there aren&amp;#039;t many that have produced the specific challenges now facing Fifty Shades of Grey writer Kelly Marcel, director Sam Taylor-Johnson and producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca. For all the sociological analysis and broadsheet think pieces that EL James&amp;#039;s fanfiction-turned-international-bestseller has spawned, its success remains at least in part a mystery.  So what exactly is it going to take for that success to be replicated on the big screen? Needless to say, there&amp;#039;s a degree of financial certainty for Focus Features from the get-go - people are absolutely, without question, going to go and watch Charlie Hunnam and Dakota Johnson getting kinky in Fifty Shades of Grey - but it&amp;#039;s unclear exactly how many of the 70 million copies sold worldwide will translate into purchased tickets.     The promised NC-17 certification is the most obvious stumbling block, immediately cutting out a substantial portion of the audience that traditionally make or break a film&amp;#039;s box office performance. It remains to be seen whether Marcel will be willing or able to stick to her guns, if the studio are determined to push for a lower rating, but going the whole hog with the explicit scenes is more or less the only way this thing can work. Because let&amp;#039;s be clear: Fifty Shades of Grey is not a layered story populated with three-dimensional characters and compelling dramatic incidents. It&amp;#039;s a series of increasingly extreme sex scenes punctuated by half-hearted gestures towards plot and backstory. Any conversation that occurs between characters exists only as a stepping-stone to the next bit of boning. The sex scenes - shoddily written and littered with weird metaphors though they are - are the only aspect of the book that works. Bluntly, if the sex isn&amp;#039;t hot, there&amp;#039;s nothing to fall back on here.  But if the makers of Fifty Shades are able to preserve the erotic stuff, there&amp;#039;s potential for the film to be substantially better than the book. What&amp;#039;s really galling about the book is James&amp;#039;s tortuous and clunky prose - just take a look through these highlights if you don&amp;#039;t believe us - and unless Marcel has gone for a voiceover, all that will be excised on-screen.     It&amp;#039;s becoming increasingly common for young-adult novels - including The Hunger Games - to be written in the first-person present tense, which creates a sense of immediacy. Fifty Shades, while arguably not aimed at young adults, is another example of this, and what it means for Hollywood adaptations is that a lot of the main character&amp;#039;s depth will inevitably be lost. In the case of The Hunger Games this was a bad thing, because Katniss Everdeen is a nuanced and interesting character whose inner life has resonance. In the case of Fifty Shades of Grey, it could be a blessing, because Anastasia Steele is a cardboard cutout whose inner monologue is excruciating to read. It&amp;#039;s not just limited to the occasional aside, although lines like &amp;quot;Holy crap!&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Damn my hair!&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Get a grip!&amp;quot; are used liberally. The weirdest aspect of James&amp;#039;s characterization of virginal college student Ana is the Inner Goddess/Subconscious device. The Inner Goddess is her libido, personified as a hyperactive and disturbingly childlike nymph-creature who&amp;#039;s always doing samba moves whenever something racy happens. It works exactly as well on the page as you&amp;#039;re imagining. Meanwhile her Subconscious is a sneery stick-in-the-mud who thoroughly disapproves of Ana&amp;#039;s newfound sex drive. Losing this bipolar pair will be an easy and beneficial move for Marcel.      There are still numerous problems, mind you. Plenty of Fifty Shades&amp;#039; non-erotic scenes that are silly on the page - take Ana getting turned on by watching her soon-to-be dominator Christian Grey pick out lengths of rope from a supply store, or literally falling into his arms during their first meeting - will be flat-out hilarious on screen without some serious tweaking. It&amp;#039;s hard to imagine how The Contract, a lengthy document outlining the limitations of the dom-sub relationship Christian proposes to Ana, will be translated; we&amp;#039;re picturing a shot of Johnson&amp;#039;s face becoming gradually more horror-struck in a scene that culminates with the cry &amp;quot;He wants to whip me with what?&amp;quot; The risk of unintentional comedy will be high.  Fifty Shades of Grey has a uphill battle to work on screen, because it&amp;#039;s building on foundations that are shaky at best. But given the involvement of an acclaimed director in Taylor-Johnson and a pair of serious and established producers in Brunetti and De Luca, there is reason to believe Fifty Shades, the movie, is being produced as more than a cynical money-spinning exercise. Despite the predictable fan tantrum that was thrown over this week&amp;#039;s casting announcements, this is one adaptation with an above-average chance of ending up better than its source material. Photo gallery - &amp;#039;50 Shades&amp;#039; star Charlie Hunnam in pictures:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/50-shades-of-grey/feature/a512189/50-shades-of-grey-movie-how-will-it-work-on-the-big-screen/>