Film "Fifty Shades of Grey" leads North American weekend box office

Universal Pictures' R-rated film "Fifty Shades of Grey" raked in about 81.7 million dollars in the Valentine's Day weekend ticket sales and is on track to see its revenue swell well over 90 million U.S. dollars after President's Day holiday.

The big-screen adaptation of E.L. James' erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, was shown at 3,646 locations in North America. And it is likely to gain another 10 million dollars on President's Day holiday which falls on Monday.

"Fifty Shades of Grey," easily outpaced "Kingsman: The Secret," an R-rated action movie and shown at 3,204 locations, which took in about 35.6 million dollars in ticket earnings in a three-day frame and will be on track to reap 41 million dollars through Monday. About 57 percent of the audience for "Kingsman: The Secret " were male and some 60 percent of the audience were older than 25.

After leading the box office last weekend, "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water" took the third place after it fell 44.8 percent to garner 30.5 million dollars in tickets sale this weekend.

Rounding out the 10 most-popular films in North America, as estimated by the studios and collated by Rentrak, were "American Sniper" (16.4 million dollars), "Jupiter Ascending" (9.4 million), "Seventh Son" (4.2 million), "Paddington" (4.1 million), "The Imitation Game" (3.5 million), "The Wedding Ringer" (3.4 million) and "Project Almanac" (2.7 million). Endite