With the release of its third and final film, the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has passed the US$1 billion milestone at the global box office.
Fifty Shades Freed whipped up US$137 million (NZ$189 million) internationally over the weekend, topping the North American market with US$38.8 million.
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Reviews slated the climactic film as the worst entry in a terrible franchise, but the wild success of each Fifty Shades movie has proven that - like the Transformers movies - they're critic-proof.
"We are exhilarated with the results," said Jim Orr of the franchise's distributor, Universal Pictures.
"To have a trilogy engineered primarily for a female audience that we were then able to broaden out into a billion-dollar franchise is just a fantastic result."
Indeed, younger female audience members were the driving force in pushing the three Fifty Shades films to their current collective worldwide total of US$1.09 billion.
In North America, Fifty Shades Freed's opening weekend audience was 75 percent female and 55 percent under 30.
The only other R-rated franchise's to total over US$1 billion internationally are The Matrix, Resident Evil, The Conjuring, The Hangover, Alien (not counting the PG-13 Alien vs Predator), Die Hard (not counting the PG-13 Die Hard 4.0) and The Terminator (just counting the first three R-rated films).
Newshub.
