A couple of weeks ago I talked about angry Batman fans, so it’s only fair that I treat another group of disenfranchised devotees equally.

Fifty Shades of Grey obsessives have taken to the internet site Change.org to register their disgust at the casting for the forthcoming movie adaptation of their favourite book.

Charlie Hunnam and Dakota Johnson have been chosen as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, and fans are furious.

At the time of writing, more than 80,000 people have joined a call for producers to sack the pair and replace them with Matt Bomer (Magic Mike, White Collar) and Alexis Bledel (Sin City, Gilmore Girls).

The petition reads: “Matt Bomer is the PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF CHRISTIAN GREY AND ALEXIS BLEDEL IS THE PERFECT ACTRESS TO REPRESENT ANASTASIA STEELE and if THEY ARE NOT, NOBODY WILL BE.”

Which is frankly terrifying, and sounds like the sort of thing a stalker would say.

In the interest of fairness, a similar petition on Change.org to replace Ben Affleck as Batman garnered more than 90,000 e-signatures from fans, but that didn’t have the whole we’re-going-to-poison-the-water-supply subtext that this does.

Fifty Shades of Grey producer Dana Brunetti tried to calm the situation, tweeting: “There is a lot that goes into casting that isn’t just looks. Talent, availability, their desire to do it, chemistry with other actor, etc. So if your favourite wasn’t cast, then it is most likely due to something on that list. Keep that in mind while hating and keep perspective.”

Perspective? He has no idea what he signed on for, does he?

Hollywood studios have been snapping up video game franchises for a while now, with even C-list titles being optioned for exploitation. It’s a little strange, then, that one of the biggest game series of all time – Grand Theft Auto – has never jumped to the big screen.

However, it’s not for want of trying. Hollywood has made repeated offers to Rockstar games, but they remain adamant that there will never been a GTA movie.

With GTA V hitting stores next week, the series’ creator Dan Houser has spoken out. “We’ve been offered, many times, and it’s never appealed,” he said. “The money’s never been close to be worth risking one’s crown jewels. Our small dabblings with Hollywood have always left us running back to games. The freedom we have to do what we want creatively is of enormous value. The second you go near Hollywood, people seem willing, or have been forced, to lose a lot of that control. That sort of amorphous ‘that won’t test well’ attitude is exactly how we don’t work. We’ve always tried to think of stuff that’s innovative and new, and to go into a world where that’s not encouraged would be horrible.”

It’s refreshing for someone to be so open about their movie misgivings, but with a cost of more than $265 million and projected first-week earnings of more than $500 million for GTA V, the Grand Theft Auto franchise is ridiculously successful on its own, so why risk making a terrible movie.

Houser went on to say that it was more likely that GTA would become a TV series, but added: “We love games and we think we’ve got something to say in games, and that games have plenty to say. So shouldn’t we just continue doing that?”

If only the creators of BloodRayne had said the same thing.

One of the perks of this column is the ability to act as cheerleader for films that you might not otherwise want to watch.

As writer of Four Weddings and A Funeral and Love Actually, Richard Curtis is well-established as a master manipulator, but he has peaked with About Time, in cinemas now.

I know, Richard Curtis films aren’t exactly short of audiences, but the dreadful posters for this film put a lot of people off, me included.

Showing a laughing Rachel McAdams, the imagery tells you nothing about the movie – making it look like a low-budget American flick where someone finds letters from their dead wife and then marries her sister.

Weaving a sci-fi premise into a simple love story, About Time is a very, very gentle tale about a young man who finds out he is able to travel backwards in his own timeline, and so uses the ability to find a girlfriend.

Cue a collection of scenes where social situations go wrong, only for our hero to find a dark place, clench his fists, and jump back in time to moments before he put his foot in his mouth. It’s all very nice, with nary a hint of the darkness such an ability could lead to.

However, the boy-girl part of this film is only the jumping-off point; the real heart of the story is the father-son relationship. Played by Bill Nighy (who is, as usual, Bill Nighy) and a wonderfully likeable Domhnall Gleeson, it’s the bond between these two men that will lead to the trademark Curtis tears. But in a good way.

Despite the time travel McGuffin, leave your sci-fi hat at home, because there are a number of holes and paradoxes that will make you twitch if you take it too seriously. Instead, just sit back and float along with the story. Yes, it portrays a cliched view of British life, is over-sentimental and utterly unrealistic, but dammit, it’s just so lovely.