Director James Foley has officially got the cameras rolling on Universal’s upcoming erotic sequel, Fifty Shades Darker.
Word comes by way of Instagram, where series author E.L. James shared the above image from the set. Fanning the flames of its BDSM franchise, the studio has locked down plans to film both Darker and Fifty Shades Freed back-to-back, with the former poised to explore the next chapter in Christian (Jamie Dornan) and Ana’s (Dakota Johnson) trying relationship after a breakup.
A brief synopsis for the follow-up describes Ana’s story as so: “Daunted by the singular tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house.”
Among the newcomers for Fifty Shades Darker are Eric Johnson, Bella Heathcote, Arielle Kebbel and Kim Basinger. Looking further afield, though, it would appear Rebel Wilson has put herself forward for a role in the 2018 threequel. Speaking to Cosmopolitan, the actress revealed that her How to be Single co-star Dakota Johnson drew her attention to the idea of joining Freed‘s cast as a dominatrix.
“Dakota was like, ‘You know there’s this one character. I forget the name, but it’s a dominatrix character that pops up in the third movie. She was like, ‘Rebel, you could be that’. So I was like, ‘If you want to put in a word for me with Universal and see what happens, yeah’. She did offer to do that!”
Wilson has become a fan-favorite thanks to roles in Pitch Perfect – also a Universal franchise – and, soon, How to be Single, which opened in theaters last week.
Circling back to the Fifty Shades franchise, though, and Fifty Shades Darker and Freed will be filmed back-to-back, with the former arriving on February 10, 2017, before Freed closes the book on February 9, 2018.