Yep. Get butts into seats on the opening weekend before word-of-mouth torpedoes the film. On this strategy, it worked. If not another soul sees FSG it will still have earned a nice profit. Sadly, enough to finance the two planned sequels.
Wouldn't be surprised if the studio went for a "reboot" and replaced Dornan and Johnson. Honestly, when it comes to the sequels, they need to replace everyone involved with this abomination. Maybe the lighting guy can keep his job.
Anyways, noticed the film is getting savaged by user reviews over at IMDB:
In the past, going back 15 years (it’s been that long already?!), user reviews have been a useful guide (and occasional warning, like now!), but more recently I’ve been paying attention to IMDB’s metacritic scores, which allowing for Hollywood biases (anything involving Robert Duvall or Mel Gibson, ee. g.), are usually an even better guide and can help “tune” the signal from the IMDB audience/mbr responses. It’s interesting to compare them.
Years ago I learned, speaking to critics’ bias, to deduct 1.5 “stars” from any Gene Siskel/Roger Ebert scoring of a foreign arthouse flick. :)