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Fifty Shades of Green

We’ve seen quite a bit of discussion in this space over whether Plugged In should’ve reviewed Fifty Shades of Grey. But there’s no question that lots of people watched it.

Fifty Shades roared to the top of the box office this weekend with an estimated $81.7 million haul. That’s the second-biggest opening ever for a February movie—trailing only 2004’s The Passion of the Christ. Oh, and it was also the fourth-biggest premiere for an R-rated movie in history, too—fifth if you count this year’s expansion of American Sniper as a debut.

And here’s the crazy thing: It did almost twice as well overseas, banking $158 million in 58 countries and setting opening-weekend records in 11 of them. The old adage that sex sells? Your score, old adage.

The movie’s box office dominance overshadowed the strong release of another R-rated movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service. It earned $35.6 million, and without even a fraction of the cultural brouhaha of Fifty Shades. It finished second, besting a bevy of holdovers.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, wrung another $30.5 million from moviegoers to squeeze out a third-place finish. It’s the only truly kid-friendly movie in the Top Five. Weird to think that, at this time last year, The LEGO Movie had trounced its late-winter competition for the second straight week. Ah, the good old days.

American Sniper finished fourth with $16.4 million and became just the third movie released in 2014 to cross the $300 million threshold. Its total domestic take stands at a tidy $304.1 million, but still about $30 million away from Guardians of the Galaxy ($333.1 million) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($336.2 million).

In its second week out, Jupiter Ascending descended all the way to fifth with a $9.4 million weekend.

Oh, and for those watching for information about Old Fashioned—the self-positioned Christian alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey—it finished the weekend in 15th place, earning $1.1 million. That’s not too shabby, really, considering it was just playing at 224 theaters (compared to Fifty Shades’ 3,646 locales). Still, it would’ve been fun to have seen the Christian flick being the one setting the records, wouldn’t it?

Final figures update: 1. Fifty Shades of Grey, $85.2 million; 2. Kingsman: The Secret Service, $36.2 million; 3. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, $31.5 million; 4. American Sniper, $16.4 million; 5. Jupiter Ascending, $9.3 million. Old Fashioned earned around $1 million and finished in 16th place.