The final chapter of the Fifty Shades trilogy is still aiming for a big opening weekend at the box office, but it’s not quite on pace to where the previous film landed.
According to Deadline, Fifty Shades Freed is on track to break $40 million in domestic theaters this weekend, but it won’t reach its predecessor, Fifty Shades Darker‘s $46.6 million.
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The site pointed out that this is actually a good sign for the franchise however, as third installments in trilogies usually underperform compared to the first two installments with the major exception being super hero films.
The film also matched the B+ Cinemascore that was given to Darker, both of which outdid the first installment’s C+.
Critics were nowhere near as kind to the film, as it currently holds an 11 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. For reference, Grey earned a 25% rating while Darker got 10%.
The first Fifty Shades installment brought in $166 million at the domestic box office, but its sequel arrived two years later to a decrease in profits of $52 million. Freed will also be up against some major competition in its second weekend as Marvel’s latest film, Black Panther, will hit theaters and is expected to rake in a whopping $150 million in its opening weekend alone and climb to as much as $400 million once it hits worldwide theaters.
Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian Grey in the trilogy, said he’s outright done with the franchise following the release of Freed.
“Um yeah, I think so,” Dornan said in an interview with E!. “I don’t think there’s any…I mean there’s no other books. [E.L. James] wrote the first two books again from Christian’s perspective, but I guess we’ve already seen…we’ve done those films, the same story, so they won’t do that again.
“Unless Erica keeps writing, but Dakota [Johnson] and I are…particularly me, I’m gettin’ too old for…for this.”
