Fifty Shades of Grey (film) James' husband, Niall Leonard, was enlisted to write the script for the film's sequel. In the same month, at the 2015 Universal CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Universal announced the release dates of the sequels, with "Fifty Shades Darker" being released on February 10, 2017, and "Fifty Shades Freed" was released on February 9, 2018. However, the sequels did not see Sam Taylor-Johnson returning as director. On August 20, 2015, the U.S. "House of Cards" director James Foley was a frontrunner to direct the sequel. In November 2015, Universal Studios announced that both films will be shot back-to-back. A spoof version
Fifty Shades (novel series) However, the books have also been largely panned by critics, with the first entry in particular "being ridiculed by virtually every critic who has read it." Since 2015 the series has been expanded with a parallel set of novels "as told by Christian": "" follows the events of "Fifty Shades of Grey" but from the perspective of Christian Grey, while "" (2017) does the same for the plot of "Fifty Shades Darker". Salman Rushdie said about the book: "I've never read anything so badly written that got published. It made "Twilight" look like "War and Peace"." Maureen Dowd described the