Not at all surprising it didn’t cost much to make. I read somewhere that a full 20 minutes of the movie was sex scenes. Those are virtually ‘free’. lol
Can’t comment further, because I haven’t seen it, though my wife has read the books.
I saw it and it's awful. The film as a whole is just terrible. The sex scenes were vanilla, boilerplate R-rated fare that succeeded in making BDSM look boring. Boobs and butts. Nothing we haven't seen on screen in the past 30 years.
As far as the rest of the movie goes, I've seen real pornos with better acting and screenwriting. I've seen real pornos with a better plot. Heck, I've seen real pornos where the "actors" had more on-screen chemistry than these two miscast losers.
How something that used to be standard fare on late-night Cinemax has turned into a $200+ million juggernaut is a mystery to me.