Best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey set to hit the big screen

You know that book that your mom gave you that she kept asking if you'd read and you didn't because you assumed it was just one of those Jodi Picoult paperbacks where everyone under the age of twelve dies at the end, until one day your curiosity got the best of you and you skimmed through a few pages, after which you vomited in your mouth a little bit and promptly called your mother back with strict instructions to never, ever mention that vile smut in your presence again?

Well, you're about to have a few more conversations with your mom that'll make you want to disown your ovaries, because Universal Pictures and Focus Features have just acquired the film rights to best-selling "mommy porn" novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Welcome to the world of "can you believe Ana Steele is twenty-one and has never flicked her own bean before?" and "have you heard of this BDSM thing? Your father and I bought some books on it the other day."

For the uninitiated, E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey is a wildly successful erotic novel that became a surprise Amazon bestseller a few months ago. The book, which is the first in a trilogy, tells the story of virginal literature student Anastasia Steele and rakish billionaire Christian Grey, who engage in sexy BDSM-style sex against the backdrop of perhaps the least sexy city known to man. (That would be Seattle.) Last week, Grey and the two other books in the trilogy reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, in large part due to the word-of-mouth recommendations of its fan base, which largely consist of married thirtysomethings (thus earning the trilogy the charming genre classification "Mommy Porn").

Between you and me, this book sounds kind of like a low-rent hybrid of Secretary and shitty Richard Branson-centric erotic fan fiction, with a little Frasier thrown in for good measure. (Because of Seattle. Whatever, I haven't read the book and I'm probably not going to, so let's just start by assuming that all movies/TV shows that take place in Seattle share the same central attributes.) However, it doesn't seem like this nonsense is going away anytime soon, so we might as well just throw in the towel and start predicting casting choices. Channing Tatum as Christian Grey? Eddie the Jack Russell terrier as non-bean-flicker Ana Steele? The sky's the limit with this one.