Zoë Kravitz Explains Why She Finally Agreed To Change NSFW Title Of Her New Channing Tatum Movie

Maybe you’ve seen a trailer for the movie Blink Twice. But would you know it just by that name?

If we told you it was that thriller with Channing Tatum about a billionaire bringing women to his private island, and suddenly everyone starts dying? Sound familiar now? Yeah, it’s that title that just doesn’t jump out and claw its way into your brain. You know what title does? P***y Island!

Yep, that was the name of the movie for MONTHS before the first trailer dropped. All through production, we’d hear about casting and see set photos from Zoë Kravitz‘s directorial debut, a movie insanely titled P***y Island. Unfortunately, like so many other movies with harder edged titles before it (F**k Buddies became No Strings Attached, All You Need Is Kill became Edge Of Tomorrow, Animal Husbandry became Someone Like You), she had to give in and change it…

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, Zoë opened up about having to give up the title she loved:

“It was made very clear to me that ‘p***y’ is a word that we, our society, are not ready to embrace yet. There were a lot of roadblocks along the way, whether it be the MPAA not wanting to put it on a poster, or a billboard, or a kiosk; movie theaters not wanting to put it on a ticket.”

Yeah, that kind of thing can literally kill your movie before it even comes out.

But Zoë did pay close attention to whether she was really offending anyone — and whether that was something she actually wanted:

“Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, ‘I don’t want to see that movie,’ which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we’re so uncomfortable using. But we’re not there yet. And I think that’s something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to. I care about people seeing the film, and I care about how it makes people feel.”

Good for her. We’re a little sad that badass, catchy-as-hell title we’ve been hearing all this time is gone. But the movie is still on the way! Hopefully it’ll still have that feel, says the filmmaker:

“I do believe that P***y Island was the first thing I wrote down when I wrote this movie, and it’s the seed of the film, and the spirit of what that means to me is still alive and very much present in the film. And I love the new title. I’m happy with the new title. I think everything happens for a reason, and I think it actually really focuses the movie in a great way. And I think that was always the way it was meant to be.”

Are YOU interested in seeing Blink Twice??

[Image via MEGA/WENN/Amazon MGM/YouTube.]