Too Many Things Being Called 'Friends with Benefits'
With no studio willing to back down and rename their production "People Who Are Having Regular Sex but Remain Only Acquaintances Rather Than Monogamous Partners in a Relationship," there are currently two movies and a television series in the works going by the name Friends with Benefits. Want to hear about them? Whatever, here it is:
Friends with Benefits #1: a new romantic comedy that just signed Justin Timberlake to star as a headhunter who finds a magazine editor to have non-relationship-driven sex with. But, UT OH, he falls in love with her even though she has a boyfriend! Which sounds suspiciously more like something befitting the title "Man Having Affair with Woman in a Relationship," but apparently they're pretty set on calling it "Friends with Benefits."
Friends with Benefits #2: an Ivan Reitman-directed comedy starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as the girl you'd most like to fuck and the last asshole you'd ever want to fuck a girl you want to fuck, respectively. The details are being kept secret, but Variety claims the story "generally revolves around the ease with which men and women become sexually involved, but have a far more difficult time establishing emotional bonds," to which Reitman elaborated, "It's an issue ripe for discussion." Because the 63-year-old director has really been itching to have a discussion about how easy it is to lay some babe, but how hard it is to love her.
Friends with Benefits #3: an NBC pilot about five friends "doing" each other, written by the (500) Days of Summer writers and executive produced by Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin. Probably the most promising "Friends with Benefits" outside of actually having a friend you can have sex with.
Bonus Friends with Benefits: Chad and Becky!!!