“Fifty Shades of Gray” sold 70 million copies last year. It was such a huge publishing phenomenon that in the words of one traditional publisher, it “distorted the entire adult (i.e., books that are not written for chidlren, not meaning porny books) fiction market.” Every EMPLOYEE at Random House got a bonus because of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
For publishers and authors that is a huge sign saying “Money Here!” over the particular niche that is “erotic romances.” And writers (and some publishers) have responded like starving hounds to a “Pork Chop Here” sign. Writers who have written erotic romances are writing more of them. Writers who write traditional romances are putting in sex scenes and calling them erotic romances. Pornographers are calling their works erotic romances. You go to Amazon.com and do a search for “erotic romance” in their Kindle store and you get 35,000 hits. They’re on the job, even if what many/some are doing is trying to cash in on the appeal of erotic romances without any real understanding of them, with products that aren’t really erotic romances. Hey, but they’re trying.
Moviemakers do not appear to have followed suit, so far as I can tell. The mainstream movie romances are still pretty much what they always were. There are no indie filmmakers or softcore pornographers exploring the potential of the genre, from what I can tell. They’re like prospectors working some very well-known sites who hear about a massive gold strike twenty miles away going, “Nope. Don’t think I’ll bother.”
I know that movies are much more expensive to make than books, and require a certain amount of lead time (as do most mass market books, really). But in the case of soft core porn and indie films, I don’t know that that lead is very great. Mainstream, perhaps so … they cost more, the risk is greater, I can see the reasons why we haven’t been flooded with mainstream movies that you could call erotic romances.
Still … no movement at all? What is going on? I really don’t understand.
I mean, it’s one thing to read an erotic novel, alone with its world (even if you’re on a bus full of people, it’s not a shared experience), and quite another watching a soft porno in a theatre full of people (oh, look, it’s your elderly neighbor! wave).
The market that might be attracted to erotic movies likely shares a strong overlap with those who have internet access and can get all the porn they want.
Well most people don’t consume porn, softcore or otherwise in theaters any more, that distribution method is long vanished. Most people consume it at home, on cable television via premium channels or the Internet.
People DO go to theaters to watch mainstream movies, and mainstream movies are kinda raunchy, but not what I’d call “erotic” for the most part. Judd Apatow movies come to mind, though I don’t believe those are erotic romances … they may be a close as mainstream movies have gotten, however.
It’s still mostly guys who watch online porn, though some women are starting to watch online porn, especially young ones – witness the appeal of rough sex porn star James Deen among teen women. The market for erotic romances, though, is mostly women who sort of moved off the reservation of regular romances because they weren’t getting what they wanted. That’s kind of what the erotic romance genre is all about: it was written by and for women who weren’t satisfied (heh) with regular romances, even though most traditional romance publishers have been publishing “steamier” lines of romances for years. (It’s these steamier romances that are being published as erotic romances.)
It seems to me that eroticism and romance are fundamentally at odds, in that the interesting part of a romance story is in how the people involved fell in love with each other, while the interesting part of eroticism usually happens after the people have already fallen in love.
I’ve heard that NC-17 and X ratings are the kiss of death for commercial films (for one thing, I believe many chain theaters won’t screen movies with those ratings), and that’s what a movie would need in order to be truly worthy of the “erotic” descriptor.
I never read the book (and don’t plan to), but I wonder what rating the Grey movie will wind up getting.
This was the first thing that came to mind; NC-17 (or even hard-R) movies can be seen as a gamble.
I also think that eroticism often works better in written form, because the reader can picture the characters and hear their voices in a way that appeals to them – movies make things much more concrete, and it’s difficult to find leads that will have a truly broad erotic appeal. Add in actor concerns about doing work that’s too close to pornographic or has too much risk to bomb and the pool shrinks.
And then you get to the actual sex in the film – how graphic and real are you going to make things? Too much, and you risk alienating the whole audience you’re trying to grab. Too little…and who’s going to bother?
And that’s all ignoring the fact that this isn’t an easy genre to write. You walk a fine line between romance and, well, porn.
The question isn’t why there aren’t erotic romance movies, the question is why there aren’t more romance movies. Romance fiction sells more than other types of fiction and has for years and years. There used to be more romance movies, but there are not really that many any more.
I looked at Rotten Tomatoes to see what romance movies there have been lately, and here’s the list. They mostly appear to be foreign movies, including a lot of Bollywood ones. The only wide release American movie seems to be Walk of Shame. I’m sure I missed some movies that are romances, like The Fault in Our Stars which seems from the advertising to be a romance, but it’s easy to see that there are relatively few romance movies released. There are thriller and mystery movies released all the time based on books, but other than Nicholas Sparks novels and a few others, not that many romance movies based on books.
I’m not sure why this is. But if movie studios aren’t making many romance movies, it doesn’t surprise me that they aren’t making romance movies that would be harder to rate and advertise for and maybe harder to get good actors willing to do the scenes.
Well there is nothing in the book that DEMANDS XXX treatment, though there are plenty of scenes that could certainly BENEFIT from it. (I have read the first book in the trilogy.) Particularly the scene with the vibrating eggs.
But you may be on to something with that mention of the existing ratings system, with its focus on what sort of images are allowed and what are not. “Fifty Shades of Grey” is very much a traditional romance in that its central focus is on the relationship between Ana and Christian Grey. That is really the heart of the story. At the same time, it does not at all shy away from the sexual aspects of their relationship (that’s what makes it “erotic”). It describes the sex acts Ana and Christian engage in in detail, and Ana’s responses to them. It also shows how those sex acts affect their relationship outside the bedroom. This kind of nuance may not even be DETECTABLE within the context of the current censorship regimen.
The dearth of “erotic romance” movies is probably for the same reason 9-1/2 Weeks was not that much of a hit. Nowadays a lot of “erotic romance” fiction is heavily B&D/D&S themed – e.g., 50 Shades – and you can sell books to that market profitably, it is a big enough market; but it is not what most people think of as “erotic” and will remain a niche market for feature films, which are much more expensive than novels to produce.
Simple demographics. Movies go for a young male demographic. Romance novels (which can be far more explicit than most people who don’t read them think*) appeal to women. It makes more sense to stick with the demographic that’s tried and true instead of hoping that an erotic romance movie might bring women into the theaters.
Remember, too, that if all the readers of the best selling erotic romance novel all show up at the theater to see the film version, the movie would be a disastrous flop. You need to draw outside that group – and there’s a good chance that the young teen male demographic would not show up.
*I was surprised when I read a humorous romance novel and discovered that the first sexual encounter (within the first 40 pages) described the protagonist (female) having rough anal sex with a demon.
Interesting. I can only imagine how hard it would be to do a screenplay for an erotic romance without getting into porn territory. I suppose you could do a drama with fairly detailed sex scenes, but that would probably be relegated to indie film territory.
Romantic comedies would lend themselves more toward mainstream popular theater, but it’d be tough to do a romantic comedy with more erotic scenes because it might make the flow a little choppy. You’d have to have a lot of tension leading up, but that doesn’t work well with comedy. So you’d either have a less-funny romantic comedy or something that might get campy.
Another thing to consider: ebooks are flipping cheap to produce. Most authors aren’t paid an advance; those who are generally aren’t paid a super big advance unless they’re a best seller. And the market is so saturated, royalties are fairly cheap to pay, too. Making a film is taking a far bigger risk.
How much nudity and how much actual simulated sex is a movie aimed at middle to upper class American women supposed to go? If there’s too much, no reputable actor or actress would touch it with a ten foot pole. You’d then be stuck with an unenviable choice: severely tone down the erotica or fill your cast with either outright porn or the kinds of actors and actresses who work in late night CInemax offerings.
I mean, look at*** Game of Thrones***- it’s a quality show, but they’ve had to hire a lot of women with hardcore porn backgrounds, because mainstream actors will only go so far.
Like has been said here I think it’s the medium.
How many times have we heard “men are visual, women are textual”.
They aren’t making these movies off of the hit books because women don’t necessarily want to “see” the book. They rather read it.
Well, you’re right in that Sibel Kekili is the only performer in the main credits with a porn background- but the many brothel scenes don’t get their actresses from the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Look, I didn’t read ***50 Shades of Grey ***and have never read any other comparable books. But I can’t picture mainstream actresses doing serious naked bondage scenes on film. Again, to do such a scene in a film aimed at suburban housewives, I suspect you’d have to either:
Tone the naughty bits way down (which defeats the purpose).
Get a cast that has no higher ambitions in show biz. Julia Roberts and Hugh Jackman aren’t going to take roles in movies like that.
No, actually, most erotic romances I’ve previewed at Amazon, and the few I’ve found worth reading that were actually written by women were much more into dominance and submission than SM, with very little bondage. It’s the brooding male figure ramped up to 11 who maybe starts the relationship with a capture during a battle, followed by the statutorily required post-battle rape, then things even out from there until he ultimately realizes Life is Meaningless Without Her, and she figures out the same about him. In romances it’s ALWAYS all about the relationship, whatever the nature of that relationship might be.