"Fifty Shades of Grey" finally has a new Christian Grey - actor Jamie Dornan. E.L. James has yet to officially announce the news but sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the 31-year-old actor is currently in negotiations to replace Charlie Hunnam as the lead.
This is huge news but the movie still has a lot more actors and actresses to cast. The source also said that Universal Pictures and Focus Features approached actress Juno Temple to play Kate Kavanagh, Anastasia Steele's best friend, but she turned it down.
They also wanted Frank Grillo to play Taylor, Grey's trusted bodyguard but he also decided to pass on the movie role. The source did not say why Temple and Grillo turned the roles down.
The movie got a major shakeup when Hunnam abruptly dropped out of the lead role last week. The studios released a statement saying that his hectic TV schedule was not allowing him the time to properly prepare for the role but there have been several rumors suggesting that Hunnam got cold feet and couldn't handle the fame. Reportedly Universal and Focus are under a tremendous amount of pressure to finish casting the movie so they can keep the Aug. 1, 2014 release date.
"Universal will now work quickly to land thesps for the remaining supporting roles that include Steele's roommate Kate, a role for which U had already been testing actresses prior to Hunnam's exit," Variety writes.
The only supporting character cast so far is Jennifer Ehle as Carla, Steele's southern mother who is in her fourth marriage. Throughout the casting process it has been revealed that several actors and actresses have turned down some of the various roles reportedly because of how sexually explicit it is. It was previously reported that Kelly Marcel, who wrote the script for the movie, wanted to keep the sex scenes in the film as close to the book as possible.
Producer Michael De Luca told reporters at the Hollywood Film Awards that filming for the movie was still scheduled to begin filming Nov. 13, which is only three weeks away.
