Sorry, octopus Christian Grey.

Thanks to his already strong relationship with Focus Features, director Gus Van Sant may be the man for the job of directing the big screen adaptation of E.L. James’ best-selling Fifty Shades of Grey erotic Twilight fan fiction. I mean, bondage romance. Sorry, I get those two descriptions confused sometimes. And if he’s not the favorite, Van Sant is at least making his presence known as he recruited Magic Mike star Alex Pettyfer to film some test sex scenes.

But ladies, before you go making “He can pet my fur” jokes, please know that this doesn’t mean that Pettyfer is going to be cast as Christian Grey. That role could still very well go to Kevin James.

Insiders stressed that Pettyfer was cast as Grey just for the tape, not the movie, though Universal just got into bed with the 23 year-old actor on its sexy remake of “Endless Love,” which he is currently shooting in Atlanta. TheWrap was unable to confirm the identity of the actress cast at Steele, the impressionable young woman who falls for kinky billionaire Grey. (Via The Wrap)

Obviously, as my amazing and now wasted banner image for 50,000 Shades of Grey Under the Sea shows us, Emma Watson was the most recently rumored actress to be up for the role of Anastasia Steele. That was according to some documents or something that were intercepted by hackers in the most unexciting hacking since your teenage sister left her Facebook logged in at the Apple Store.

As for Van Sant, he is not currently working on any films so his schedule is open, but Focus never asked him or Pettyfer to do this, so this is basically a story about an older man who tricked a young actor into having simulated sex on camera. Or Thursday, as people in Hollywood call it.

Pictured: Steven Seagal’s ex-wife

That picture above? That was a game-changer in my childhood, man. When people talk about John Hughes movies like Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I’m always like, “Nah bro, it’s all about Weird Science” because it’s one of the greatest movies ever made. And now, here we are, delivering the inevitable – news that Weird Science is being remade by Universal Pictures.

This isn’t a grand revelation, as we knew this was coming, but now it’s as real as a Slurpee dumped on your head by Robert Downey Jr., because Universal has hired a writer.

The film will be produced by Joel Silver, who made the original with Hughes at Universal. Michael Bacall will write the script. He scripted the sleeper hit Project X for Silver Pictures and wrote the script for 21 Jump Street, another 80s-centric property that became a hit for Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. (Via Deadline)

In a quick search of Twitter and Tumblr, I saw plenty of people upset about this news, to which I mentally replied, “Because this is clearly the worst thing happening in the world right now”, but the backlash should be expected. After all, this is a classic along the lines of Citizen Kane and Casablanca that is being remade. This isn’t Curly Sue or Beethoven’s 4th. This is Weird-f*cking-Science man.

But I’m here to talk my fellow bra-heads off the ledge. I have a little method – call it therapy – that we can use to ease ourselves into this idea…

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The film Twins was released in 1988, when stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were 41- and 44-years old, respectively. Additionally, Eddie Murphy was just 28-years old at the time, and while he wasn’t in the film, he was a rising comedy and action star with unlimited potential. Now, Schwarzenegger, DeVito and Murphy are 65, 67 and 51, respectively, and they’ve each had their fair share of personal relationship drama and controversy smeared across the media, so why wouldn’t they team up to make a sequel to Twins?

It seems that Universal Pictures is hellbent on bringing Triplets to the big screen ASAP, because Book of Mormon star Josh Gad has been hired along with Ryan Dixon to write the screenplay’s treatment, according to Deadline. Murphy will play the long-lost third Benedict brother, while Ivan Reitman will once again direct. Gad’s writing experience is limited to something called Gigi and the new comedy series, 1600 Penn (*cough, That’s My Bush was better, cough*) while Dixon has done… *flips papers around, stares at screen*… nothing.

Regardless, this is big news for Murphy, who continues his comedy acting renaissance that began with the horrible Tower Heist and was celebrated last week at Spike TV’s “Eddie Murphy: One Night Only” tribute show. Airing last night, the event honored the guy whose body of work was crushed by an ACME anvil sometime around 1992, and according to Extra, he was all laughs about being miles beyond his prime.

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"I know I left my keys in here somewhere."

Last we checked in on David Cronenberg – or Bronenberg, as I call him at our weekly poker games – he was taking a big, stinky dump on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the people who love those movies because we’re stupid for liking comic books, or something to that effect. Meanwhile, his new film Cosmopolis started opening on a platform release last Friday, which means that you’ll be able to see it in your city by November. Hopefully those two things have kept him distracted from the fact that his 1983 science fiction thriller Videodrome is being remade.

Universal Pictures already brought in Ehren Kruger to pen the new version, and that’s exciting, because his writing credits include Reindeer Games and the last two Transformers films. You should see the size of the vein building in my forehead right now. And to top it all off, a director has been chosen in Adam Berg, who makes commercials.

Berg won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for his Carousel ad for Philips, and has helmed numerous other commercials and short films.

When Kruger and [producer Daniel] Bobker set it up at Universal, they planned to modernize the concept, infusing it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller. (Via Deadline)

To recap: the guy who wrote the horrendous Reindeer Games is teaming up with his co-producer from the universally-loathed Dream House, and they hired the guy who made this Philips commercial to direct…

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"Pweeze stop negwecting me!"

Last we checked in on the Fifty Shades of Grey book trilogy, author Erika Leonard – AKA E.L. James, AKA Snowqueen Icedragon – was sitting pretty and incredibly wealthy in the Top 4 spots on the USA Today’s Best-Selling Books List. Of course, how can three books take up four spots? Because the paperback bundle of the entire trilogy is in 4th place. Take that, books that some other losers wrote!

And the last we checked in on the possibility of a Fifty Shades film, there were outrageous rumors that Angelina Jolie might sign on to direct. Sure, we scoffed at that, but it turns out there are some pretty big producers working on what will indeed be a film trilogy produced by Universal Pictures. Michael De Luca (The Social Network, Moneyball) and Dana Brunetti (The Social Network, 21) now stand before millions of horny women who will kill them if they screw this up.

Universal Pictures and Focus Features secured rights to the Fifty Shades trilogy for $5 million in March and have since been looking to fill roles for on screen and behind the scenes.

“At its core, Fifty Shades of Grey is a complex love story, requiring a delicate and sophisticated hand to bring it to the big screen,” Universal Pictures co-chairman Donna Langley said in an announcement. (Via Mashable)

Just $5 million? That seems like a hell of a bargain for what’s sure to be a surefire blockbuster trilogy. I suppose that leaves more money available for Universal to throw $20 million per film at Michael Fassbender so he can pretty much guarantee that no guys ever get laid again.

RELEVANT UPDATE: Dana Brunetti is friends with porn stars so he’s god a solid background.