Hold on to your horses. At long last, the movie stars to play Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, the main characters of E.L. James’ BDSM-themed novel Fifty Shades of Grey, have been revealed!

From Action to Sexy

From True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard to Vampire Diaries’ Ian Somerhalder and even to Twilight’s Rob Pattinson, there were many names involved in the casting of the novel’s male lead role – the wealthy, enigmatic but mysterious Christian Grey. At one point, British actor Alex Pettyfer, White Collar’s Matt Bomer and even Superman Henry Cavill were believed to be shortlisted for it.

But the one who nabbed it was really an unexpected choice -English actor Charlie Hunnam whose most recent film was Pacific Rim, a far cry from the kinky theme that surrounds the Fifty Shades project.

Other than starring as a Jaeger pilot in the Guillermo Del Toro’s action-packed robot epic, the 33-year-old actor is also a regular in FX’s Sons of Anarchy and has also appeared in the 2003 war drama Cold Mountain. He became well known when he played a gay teen character named Nathan Maloney in a UK 1999-2000 drama entitled Queer.

E.L. James’ friend and another author, Bret Easton Ellis, revealed in a tweet Monday that the Fifty Shades of Grey author had wanted Robert Pattinson to play Christian.

‘E.L. James and I were at Rob Pattinson’s house when she admitted that Rob was first choice for Christian,’ Ellis posted in Twitter.

This may be to the fact that The Twilight Saga had spawned the creation of Miss James story so she might have written about her novel’s male lead character with Edward Cullens in mind played by Pattinson in the Twilight movie adaptations.

Petite Anastasia

For the female lead role where young actresses like Emma Watson, Nina Dobrev and even Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence were thrown in, another unheard of star is also casted.

The actress to play Anastasia Steele in the movie adaptation of Miss James’ controversial book is Dakota Johnson. She may be a little unknown in the movie world but she did play roles in attention-grabbing films like The Social Network where she did a love scene with pop artist Justin Timberlake, teen flick and another book movie Beastly, 21 Jump Street and Fox’s brief series Ben and Kate.

Producers of the Grey movie may have seen her potential as she was able to work with them in The Social Network in 2010.

Producer Michael De Luca had also given assurance in his tweet Monday that the two artists have an undeniable chemistry and showed great promise when they auditioned together. ‘Auditions were stunning, incredible chemistry!’ his message reads.

Mixed Reactions

However, the Dakota-Charlie team-up for the Grey movie was met with mixed reactions from fans with outbursts ranging from downright rude and angry to bewildered and confused to being happy about the casting.

“Very disappointed in the cast for the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey” #UglyActors&Actresses” vented one tweet.

“Dakota Johnson isn’t right shade. Need big blue eyes and look younger… no I’m not watching fifty shades of grey,” still another one threatened.

However, E.L. James is taking everything good-naturedly and keeps mum about it. Perhaps she’s waiting to prove everyone wrong about it come the release of the movie which is reportedly is August next year.