New 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Teaser Photo Is All Tease

Back in June, the Fifty Shades of Grey producers celebrated fictional dreamboat Christian Grey’s birthday with a screenshot of actor Jamie Dornan driving a car. Now that heroine Anastasia Steele’s birthday has rolled around, they’ve tweeted out this new photo of actress Dakota Johnson holding a pencil. What’s next? Rita Ora, who plays Christian’s sister Mia, brushing her teeth? Dornan’s onscreen mom Marcia Gay Harden doing taxes? Let’s get the whole cast in on this mundane screenshot action! It would be a piece with this year’s trend of spoiler-free photo releases. (Where’s the action in your action movie Jurassic World?)

Of course, the image of sweet, innocent Anastasia Steele holding a pencil to her lips is intended to be suggestive of something else — particularly since the pencil bears the name of her sexually adventurous love interest. (She probably plucked it from Christian’s desk: It actually reads “Grey Enterprises,” the name of his wildly successful company.) In this sense, the photo is slightly more exciting than the aforementioned “Christian drives a car” picture. But it still rates at about the same titillation level as the honeymoon scene from Austin Powers. Given the hot-and-heavy nature of the E L James bestseller, why is the movie marketing team playing it so safe? With this much teasing, we’re expecting a big pay-off on Valentines Day 2015.

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