Jolie going Grey?

I’ve been hearing a lot about Fifty Shades of Grey lately—that every middle-aged woman in America is either reading it or talking about how they are absolutely not going to read it; that you have to be 18 to buy the thing; that it’s changing the way some couples view their marriages.

Really? It seems some readers are taking whatever they want from Grey. So, is this a pulpy romance novel, a dark anti-romance novel, an accidental guidebook, a menace to society?

I suppose I’ll let Brooklyn Decker explain.

I knew this was a phenomenon when a soft-spoken request for the book from the mousey housewife in line in front in line at a Houston Barnes & Noble last weekend elicited an exasperated “I’m too old for this” eye roll from the clerk.

Of course, with any literary property that has success like Grey comes discussion of a movie franchise, and Deadline is reporting that actor, director and part-time New Orleanian Angelina Jolie has had preliminary discussions about helming the picture.

Sure, she once wore a vial of her husband’s blood as a necklace on the red carpet—but those were her Billy Bob Thornton days—it’s still too early to tell if the racy novel is up Jolie’s alley. For now this rumor seems, much like the book itself, I imagine, to be a lot of wishful thinking.