Disgusted that someone would take their intellectual property about one woman's repeated, bondage-laced erotic encounters, and transform it into pandering masturbation fodder before they got the chance to, Universal has sued the makers of the redundantly titled Fifty Shades Of Grey: A XXX Adaptation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Smash Pictures is the subject of the new lawsuit from the studio, which purchased the rights to turn E.L. James' clumsily written fantasies into brand-recognition reality last year. Unfortunately, Smash got to the material first, making a film that Universal claims steals "exact dialogue, characters, events, story, and style from the Fifty Shades trilogy… [ensuring] that the first XXX adaptation was, in fact, as close as possible to the original works"—albeit one free of this awkward argument pretending as though said works should be considered in loftier literary terms than porn, simply because someone put a dust jacket on it.
"Smash Pictures copies without reservation from the unique expressive elements of the Fifty Shades trilogy… The first XXX adaptation is not a parody, and it does not comment on, criticize, or ridicule the originals. It is a rip-off, plain and simple," Universal said of the porn film based on the extended fan-fiction riff on Twilight, where the brooding young vampire is swapped for a brooding young businessman with a taste for ass-play. Universal also derided Smash Pictures' "willful attempt to capitalize on the reputation of the book," given that they'd already paid $5 million to do that.