In just one weekend, the movie version of the best-selling book, Fifty Shades of Grey, has racked up $265 million at the global box office. With $85 million of that coming from the U.S., the film had the best opening weekend of any February release in history beating out The Passion of the Christ which earned $83.8 million when it opened in 2004.
Considering the film cost just $40 million to make, it’s already a huge profit-maker for Universal and its parent company Comcast CMCSA -1.14%. As my colleague Scott Mendelson pointed out, Universal did a great job marketing the movie (aside from a disastrous press tour) and the studio apparently made the right decision to tone down some of the more explicit sexual material that made the book such a hit but would have risked an NC-17 rating.
For years the most successful Valentine’s Day movies have been based on Nicholas Sparks books. Films like The Vow and Safe Haven were the go-to February romance films. Fifty Shades of Grey changed the equation before it even hit theaters. This year’s annual Nicholas Sparks film, The Longest Ride, will hit theaters in April instead of February this year.
While I would like to hope that the lesson Hollywood takes away from the film is that female directors making movies aimed almost squarely at women can make boatloads of money, it’s more likely that other studios will just look to replicate the Fifty Shades template of an inexpensive soft-core film hitting theaters in February. It will be almost impossible to find a similarly successful book to base future films on but there are plenty of Fifty Shades clones with unsubtle names from best-selling authors like Tame Me, Taking It All and Bared To You. Today executives are no doubt screaming at their development worker bees to find the next Fifty Shades.
Universal has a lock on this market for the next few years thanks to the two sequels to Fifty Shades from author E.L. James. Although both lead actors Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan seemed like they absolutely hated filming the first movie, a nice bump in salary should help get them back for the next two films.
While some have said Fifty Shades could become the R-rated equivalent of Twilight, that seems like a stretch. The film will have to hold strong at the box office in order to approach Twilight levels (even the first Twilight movie earned $392 million at the global box office) and each subsequent film will have to earn more at the box office. The final Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn Part II was the highest-grossing of the franchise with $830 million at the global box office.
There’s a good chance Fifty Shades won’t have that kind of staying power. Audiences may have paid their money opening weekend but they’re not overly-enthused about the film. It got a Cinemascore of C+. Kingsman: The Secret Service, which was the other big film this weekend with $36 million at the box office, gets a B+.
Even if it’s not the next Twilight, it’s sure to spur plenty of imitators, just like the book did.
Plot Summary
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When Anastasia Steele, a literature student, goes to interview the wealthy Christian Grey as a favor to her roommate Kate Kavanagh, she encounters a beautiful, brilliant and intimidating man. The innocent and naive Ana starts to realize she wants him. Despite his enigmatic reserve and advice, she finds herself desperate to get close to him. Not able to resist Ana’s beauty and independent spirit, Christian Grey admits he wants her too, but on his own terms. Ana hesitates as she discovers the singular tastes of Christian Grey – despite the embellishments of success, his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, and his loving family, Grey is consumed by the need to control everything
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