Hollywood Take 2: Universal Sucks Up Twilight Fan Fiction!

This is where we decompress and review the top headlines in Hollywood this week. However, in honor of April fools day, I selected a few stories that made me laugh because of the irony. Let’s see if you get the same reaction.

Essential Stories:

• Universal purchases: Twilight Fan Fiction “50 Shades of Grey“
• The MPAA gives Bully an R rating, while The Hunger Games gets a PG-13 rating.
• Rupert Murdoch complains the BBC manipulated emails by News Corp in a BBC Documentary.

I know this is a short list but the situations are unbelievably funny. Enjoy!

Universal purchases: Twilight Fan Fiction “50 Shades of Grey“

This topped my list of most ridiculous stories in Hollywood this week. Now imagine you wrote a series of books and it becomes a massive success. So much so, women returned to theaters in droves and it becomes a box-office phenomenon. As a compliment, one of the fans creates porn fan-fiction based on the main characters and plot of your original novel. As horrifying as that may be, imagine these fan-fiction stories getting published? To kick it up a notch, one studio bought the rights to make it into a film. The nightmare continues when the fans of your original novel start demanding the principle actors (in Twilight) also play the lead characters in their fan-fiction film. I wish I could say April fools. However, this is not a joke! Here’s one bloggers opinion about this news.

• “Yes, the huge hit HUNGER GAMES, like so many other successes, was roundly DISSED by the tastemakers known as Hollywood Studio Executives. These imbeciles get their jobs with no certified skill set; just a desire to be in the business. Then somehow they think they are qualified to judge literary material. Until there is a standardized exam for “creative executives,” to demonstrate to writers their knowledge of film, story craft, and general reading comprehension, this business will suffer.[1]”

Bully gets R rating while The Hunger Games gets a PG-13 rating.

After the highly anticipated film The Hunger Games (a film featuring kids killing kids) opened last weekend. It had many questioning how did this film receive a PG-13 rating?  Yet, the MPAA gave the documentary Bully an R rating due to explicit language? Weinstein and Co. decided to release the film this Friday as un-rated instead of concede to the MPAA’s recommendations.  Many are wondering about the MPAA’s motives. Here’s what some had to say.

• “The hypocrisy is that the very movies that contribute to violence can be seen by teenagers because they get a PG-13,” Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) said, referring to “The Hunger Games.” “And the one film [‘Bully’] that actually teaches them to respect others is given an R.“[2]

Rupert Murdoch complains the BBC manipulated emails by News Corp in a BBC Documentary.

Oh! Poor Rupert. I saw this story on Deadline.com where Rupert Murdoch has accused the BBC of tampering with News Corp emails for the shows documentary Panorama.  But the BBC is fighting back saying,

• “A BBC1 show, Panorama, said that News Corp and a video software and content security provider it has controlled, NDS, illegally helped to sabotage Murdoch’s pay TV rivals. ”We stand by the Panorama investigation,” the BBC says in a statement. The emails cited in the program “were not manipulated, as NDS claims”……..[3]

Do you feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch?  To read the entire story click here. Try not to laugh while reading and have a Happy April Fools Day!

Tags: 50 shades of Grey, Bully, Rupert Murdoch, twilight, Universal Pictures