'My heart was broken by that process': Fifty Shades Of Grey screenwriter reveals the movie is 'too painful to watch' because EL James vetoed all her 'crazy artistic' ideas

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'I don't feel like I can watch it': Kelly Marcel, who wrote the script for Fifty Shades Of Grey, said most of her 'crazy, artistic' ideas were vetoed

The Fifty Shades Of Grey screenwriter has revealed she refuses to watch the hit movie because it is so different to what she wrote.

Kelly Marcel, who also penned Saving Mr Banks, told Bret Easton Ellis's podcast she constructed a 'crazy and artistic' script that stripped out most of EL James's original dialogue to make it 'really sexy'.

But despite the producers' excitement at her ideas, almost all of her amendments were vetoed by James, she claims.

'My heart really was broken by that process, I really mean it,' Marcel said. 

'I don’t say it out of any kind of bitterness or anger or anything like that. I just don’t feel like I can watch it without feeling some pain about how different it is to what I initially wrote.'

The erotic blockbuster was a hit at the box office with $569.6m in ticket sales, but received widespread criticism for its clunky dialogue and awkward sex scenes.

Though Universal Pictures has already commissioned the sequel Fifty Shades Darker, Marcel and director Sam Taylor-Johnson have pulled out of the process.

'I very much wanted to do something different with the screenplay,' Marcel told American Psycho writer Easton Ellis, an early fan of the salacious novel, in an hour-long interview.

'When I spoke to the studio and the producers and made that quite clear, they were very enthusiastic about that and kind of loved the things I wanted to do.

'I didn't want the story to be linear; I wanted it to begin at the end of the film, and for us to meet in the middle. 

'So you start with the spanking, and you have these sort of flashes that go throughout the film. ... I wanted to take the inner goddess out, and all of Ana's inner monologue. ... I wanted to remove a lot of the dialogue.

'I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn't so much talking in it.' 

However, after completing the script she realized how little control she had. 

Control: EL James, author of the salacious novel, refused to stray far from the original dialogue. She has appointed her husband Niall Leonard (right) as the screenwriter for the 2017 sequel, Fifty Shades Darker

Dropped out: Director Sam Taylor-Johnson (pictured, left, directing the stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson) has also bowed out of the sequel, and later described the project in an interview as 'difficult'

'When I delivered that script was when I realized that all of them saying, "Yeah, absolutely this is what we want!", and, "You can write anything you like and get crazy and artistic with it" — that was utter, utter bulls***. Rightly so... 

'Ultimately, Erika [L James] did have all of the control.'

Sam Taylor-Johnson has also spoken out about the difficulties of the film.

'It was difficult, I’m not going to lie,' she told Porter magazine shortly after the movie screened on Valentine's Day this year. 

Elaborating on the tension, Marcel told Easton Ellis: 'There was a moment where we were weeks away from shooting … and it was clear that that was gonna be a struggle.

'It’s very difficult to come on as a director and to be handcuffed that way and not be able to fulfil your creative vision because there are certain restrictions on you. But at the same time, I would argue that it was very clear that that was the way it was going to be.'

Easton Ellis was an interesting choice for a sounding board: he was fiercely critical when EL James selected Marcel to write the screenplay, having lobbied to write it himself. 

At the time, he tweeted: 'Kelly Marcel?!? KELLY MARCEL?!? Kelly Marcel is WRITING the script for "Fifty Shades of Grey"?!? THIS is the movie they want to make? ARGH.'

Different approach: Marcel said, 'I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn't so much talking in it'

He followed it with another tweet: 'Kelly Marcel: the creator of (gulp) "Terra Nova" and a Mary Poppins bio-pic has been blessed by EL James and no one can stop her. Dear God.'

In conversation, Easton Ellis asked: 'Kelly how did you get this job, which was one of the most coveted jobs in recent times?'

She explains that the producers were more interested in someone who could make the characters three-dimensional, rather than a sex-scene writer, but ultimately stayed faithful to the book's style.

For the sequel, slated for 2017, James's husband Niall Leonard, a TV writer, will take the helm. A director has yet to be selected.