The Great 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Porn Parody Lawsuit Nightmare Is Finally Over

Back in November, Vinnie wrote that the copyright owner of the wildly popular book Fifty Shades of Grey and Universal, the studio bringing that saucy literary romp to the big screen, were suing Smash Pictures, the company responsible for Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaption. Of course, there’s a great deal of irony in the people behind a porn parody of Twilight suing the porn parody of a porn parody, but this world is full of idiots, so here we are.

Anyway, it appears that the miscreants behind the porn-within-a-porn have been whipped into submission, as the porn producers have agreed to a settlement with Universal and the other people.

Universal, book rights holder Fifty Shades Ltd and Smash Pictures “have reached an agreement to settle this matter upon payment of a confidential sum by Smash Pictures to Plaintiffs and upon entry by the Court of a Stipulated Judgment for Permanent Injunction with respect to Plaintiffs’ claims for copyright and trademark infringement,” according to a short court notice. No actual sums were given in the settlement, reached Friday. (Via Deadline)

Of course, while the average porn enthusiast has wondered what the big, thick, throbbing deal is, the complaint was that this wasn’t a parody at all. Smash Pictures was just trying to make their own version of Fifty Shades – with all of the glorious nudity and hardcore bondage, of course – while hiding behind the unoriginal-yet-popular XXX parody title. That, of course, pissed Universal off, what with all of that coin they shelled out.

“The first XXX adaptation is not a parody, and it does not comment on, criticize, or ridicule the originals. It is a rip-off, plain and simple,” said the plaintiffs. Universal and Focus Features picked up rights to the E.L. James-authored softcore novels in a heated bidding war in March 2012 for more than $3 million.

And Universal would be damned if anyone was going to cut off a little slice of the billion-dollar pie that the studio secured in winning the rights to this book. Except maybe the SyFy Channel, because they may produce something like 50,000 Shades of Grey and Christian Grey is played by an octopus with a bunch of whips. It might look something like this:

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