The Web went crazy yesterday for a Hollywood rumor about Angelina Jolie being close to signing a deal to direct the movie version of 50 shades of Grey. It would surely be a red-hot match… yet reality is quite different.

According to Insidemovies, the news was originally launched as one of the many speculative headlines used by movies websites to attract their readership. The strong interest shown by the public then gave value to this hypothesis until Universal – who owns the movie rights of the novel – actually contacted the actress, but without success.

For several months Mrs. Pitt will in fact be busy on the set of Maleficent, in which she stars as the eponymous evil witch, while the hype is pushing for the earliest possible arrival of Christian Grey and Bella Swan Anastasia Steele on the big screen. Jolie, who already directed the tragic In the land of blood and honey, also declared to be only interested in directing her own screenplays – the next of which will be about the Afghanistan war.