9½ Weeks

9½ Weeks is a 1986 American erotic romantic drama film directed by Adrian Lyne, and starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. The film follows New York City art gallery employee Elizabeth McGraw (Basinger) who has a brief yet intense affair with mysterious Wall Street broker John Gray (Rourke). The screenplay by Patricia Knop, Zalman King and Sarah Kernochan is adapted from the 1978 memoir Nine and a Half Weeks by Austrian-American author Ingeborg Day, under the pseudonym "Elizabeth McNeill". Principal photography was completed in August 1984, but the film was not released until February 1986. Considered too explicit by its American distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 9½ Weeks was heavily edited for release in the United States, where it was a box-office bomb, grossing $6.7 million on a $17 million budget. It also received mixed reviews at the time of its release. However, its soundtrack sold well and the film itself became a huge success internationally in its unedited version, particularly in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, grossing $100 million worldwide. It has also acquired a large fanbase on video and DVD and has developed a cult following.