Charlie Hunnam exits ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’
“Saturday Night Live” alumnus Will Forte stops off at the Cinefamily Theatre in Los Angeles as he promotes his new movie, “Nebraska,” with with Bruce Dern.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)Hugh Hefner, who founded Playboy in 1953 and turned it into a multimedia empire, remains the magazine’s editor in chief.
(Liz O. Baylen/Los Angeles Times)Actor Vin Diesel is the producer and star of the sci-fi thriller “Riddick.”
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)Director Guillermo del Toro, in the mixing studio at Warner Bros. in Burbank, has a new movie coming out called “Pacific Rim,” a shot of which is on in the background, about an alien attack threatening the Earth’s existence. Giant robots piloted by humans are deployed to fight off the menace.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)It seems there was a little too much gray area in Charlie Hunnam’s schedule. The “Sons of Anarchy” actor has dropped out of the much-talked-about “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie.
Hunnam had been tapped to play the S&M-loving billionaire Christian Grey in the big-screen adaption of the E.L. James erotica novel--a casting choice that left some scratching their heads and others furiously calling for a rewrite.
It looks like the latter won out. On Saturday, Universal Pictures and Focus Features released the following statement:
“The filmmakers of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam’s immersive TV schedule which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey.”
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The 33-year-old British actor is best known for playing tough-guy Jackson “Jax” Teller on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” a series centered on an outlaw motorcycle club. He recently appeared this summer as Raleigh Beckett in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim.”
Hunnam’s departure puts the high-profile project in quite the bind. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which is being directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, is scheduled to be released in August.
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