Weekend Box Office: Audiences Get Carried Away with “Fifty Shades of Grey”

Not too surprisingly, Fifty Shades of Grey scored at the box office this weekend, pulling in an estimated $85 million. This gives it the fourth highest-grossing opening weekend of all time for an R-rated movie, right behind The Hangover Part II. Coupled with the impressive receipts from Thursday night showings, Fifty Shades has now earned over $94 million against a budget of $40 million, despite scathing reviews from critics.

Fifty Shades‘s victory is coming on the heels of the success of American Sniper, which is continued its impressive box office run by earning $19.5 million this weekend, good enough for fourth place. Sniper‘s $89 million opener is second only to The Matrix Reloaded among R-rated films.

Meanwhile, another R-rated film entered the fray and fared better than expected. Matthew Vaughn’s spy actioner Kingsman: The Secret Service pulled in an impressive $36.2 million to come in second place. Its four-day total is sitting at an estimated $42 million.

This means that three of the four top earners this weekend were R-rated movies, which would certainly run counter to Hollywood’s thinking that the big money is in diluting films to a PG-13 to reach a wider audience. Is it too much to hope that this weekend could send a signal to the studios that there is a market – and a successful one – for adult-oriented films?

In third place, dropping less than 30% from its opening a week ago was The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, securing the family crowd with an estimated $40 million.

Already having bombed in their opening weekends, big-budget disasters Jupiter Ascending and Seventh Son dropped even further. Jupiter‘s receipts plummeted 41.9%, for a $10.7 million fifth-place finish. Seventh Son dropped 34.1% for only $4.8 million and seventh place.

The Top Ten:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey, $94 million
2. Kingsman: The Secret Service, $42 million
3. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, $40 million
4. American Sniper, $19.5 million
5. Jupiter Ascending, $10.7 million
6. Paddington, $5.4 million
7. Seventh Son, $4.8 million
8. The Imitation Game, $4.1 million
9. The Wedding Ringer, $3.7 million
10. Project Almanac, $3.3 million

via Box Office Mojo