Shailene Woodley might have gone in a different direction when it came time to pick a tagline for edgy romantic dramedy The Fault in Our Stars, about two teenage cancer patients who fall in love.
"I had a really strong response to it," the 22-year-old actress told Entertainment Weekly regarding the "One Sick Love Story" tagline chosen for the movie's first teaser poster that some people with access to the Internet found not at all funny or clever when it debuted last week.
"It's definitely...it's not a tagline that I probably would have chosen by any means," Woodley continued. "But I think that there's so many people who are so passionate about this book that there's nothing that will ever satisfy everyone. So I think it was just up to the discretion of the marketing mavens.
"For me, it was..." she said, "yeah, not something I would have chosen. But it seems like half the people love it and half the people don't like it."
Count author John Green, who penned the hit young-adult novel upon which the movie is based, as a fan of what the "marketing mavens" came up with.
"I found it dark and angry in the same way that [the main character] Hazel is (at least at times) dark and angry in her humor," the 36-year-old author wrote on his Tumblr in response to the hubbub.
"I mostly wanted something that said, ‘This is hopefully not going to be a gauzy, sentimental love story that romanticizes illness and further spreads the lie that the only reason sick people exist is so that healthy people can learn lessons.' But that's not a very good tag line. I like the tag line because it says, literally, the sick can also have love stories. Love and joy and romance are not just things reserved for the well."
But Woodley remains a woman of her convictions.
"I could see where [Green] was coming from," she also told EW. "But it's still not something that I would have chosen."
The Fault in Our Stars, costarring 19-year-old Ansel Elgort as Hazel's similarly afflicted love interest Augustus, hits theaters June 6.
First up, however, Elgort and Woodley will display a completely different kind of chemistry (well, we hope) playing brother and sister in the hotly anticipated Divergent, out March 21.